Human Rights Award for Iranian Blogger

Shiva Nazar Ahari , iranian blogger and political activist, received the Theodor-Haecker-Award for her courageous fight for human rights in Iran. In her blogs Azad Zan and Committee of Human Rights Reporters Mrs. Ahari makes public the violence of the IRI authorities against the iranian people. From her own experiences, she describes the physical and mental oppression at Evin prison.

She was sentenced in September 2010 with the allegation of Mohareb and imprissoned again, but had to be released later after rising international protests. The award to Mrs. Ahari is named after Theodor Haecker, a german philosopher and writer who stoud in opposition against the Nazi regime. Former recipients of the award are Kitwe Mulunda Guy (Kongo), Judith Galarza (Mexico), Eren Keskin (Turkey), Salima Ghezali (Algeria)and Jehan Sadat (Egypt).

A Night Walk at Full Moon

Hi Michael,

I just arrived at home, after driving my friends home. Very tired. I sweared to myself I wont do this any more. You know what happened ? In the middle of the night, more than a kilometer away from home, my car stoped without any obvious reasons (Except for a loud noise that came from somewhere under it). Hey, what is this with your german cars? It is a Benz (o.k., not very young any more), how can it just let me stand alone on the road in the middle of the night ? The disgusting thing was that my mobile also was low on battery, so can you imagine I had to walk home at 2 o”clock a.m.?
My only rescue was the bright, full moon. It was so strong, that I could always see my moon-shadow.

Hope you are fine, sleep well.
TAKE CARE,
/ghazal

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Ghazal my Dear,

Poor you, must be a frightening experience to walk home in the middle of the night. I guess it was not the kind of walk that you liked so much here in Munich, where you had your thoughts flow and your vitamine D pool recharged in the sun. I have to estimate, if and how much moon-light is sufficient to synthesize it. But I guess it has no UV-A, what do you think ? By the way, wouldn”t it be an interesting project to study photobiology in cells using only moon-light ?
So you worked as a driver again. I suspect people exploit too much your refusal to drink alcohol at the party, and at the end invite you as their driver.
The moon was visible here as well. If you can, make a photo of your moon shaddow.
The one below I did in our garden.
full-moon-17042011

Take Care, my Cat on the Moon,
Michael

Salman Rushdie about Chernobyl

Dear michael,
Finally, I gave the talk about my MSc thesis today here in the institute, and as you expected, people were much more interested to discuss the implications of the Fukushima accident (which of course also has to do with radio-iodine) than the genetic studies I did last year in Munich. I doubt if people could really estimate what we found out with you doing the genetic studies in mice.
Before presenting the talk to my colleagues, I practised a bit at home and gave the same presentation to my family. My parents were much more interested in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, which I used as introduction to explaine the importance of the radio-iodine incorporation studies. I now understand why: When the Chernobyl disaster happened, I was exactly 10 month old, so according to all the studies that I read for my thesis, I was at the most sensitive age when the radioactive cloud reached Sweden. You see how differently people anticipate events: Nowadays everybody is worried about the Fukushima disaster from 3 weeks ago, whereas my parents are obviously still worried if their daughter might have been affected by the Chernobyl fall-out.
My dad, who is always very interested in names and their meaning wanted to know what this “Chernobyl” means. But my mom immediately shouted “Who cares about names, if the only daughter we have might have been irradiated”. Thanks god I could relieve her anxiety by showing the graphs from my thesis about the latency time of thyroid-cancer, and she understoud that the danger is already very low for me cause I”m old enough (“Eh Vay, old enough for what? Who can tell me”). Now, Mom could lean back again and Dad came back to his question about the meaning of “Chernobyl“. I still remembered that you once told me it is the russian and ukrainian word for Artemesia, a shrub used as herb for cooking and in traditional chinese medicine. Since dad is not so specialized in botanics, he looked it up in his precious Encyclopedia Iranica and found something interesting: Artemisia (or Wormwood) is called in turkish Shaybani, and this was also the name of an invader that came in the 16th century from middle asia (Usbekistan, where you got your Polou-recipie from) to Iran. His persian name was شیبک خان ازبک
and he defeated Barbur, the first ruler of the Moguln-empire. Since the persian Shah Ismail began to fear that Shaybani might look for other neighboured countries to conquer, he attacked him
in the battle of Marv. Shaybani was killed in this battle and parts of his body send by Shah Ismail to other leaders of neighboured empires as a warning.
My Dad told us all these stories of wars, victories and defeates with great passion. But Mom and myself as usual questioned the meaning of this for the progress of civilization and for the goal of human happiness. We suspected that in all these heroic stories of the battles between nations and empires, the million tears and lost lives were forgotten. Neither my Dad nor the encyclopedia iranica knew anything about the families of Shaybani, Emir of Buchara, of Barbur, the first Moguln ruler or of Shah Ismail of Persia. During these persistent fights to expand their empires or to defend it against the attacks from enemies, they were virtually rarely at home. Who were looking after their wives and children ? If today a husband and father would be absent from home so frequently, I guess the department for child care or some family judges would fine hime.

Hope you don”t have these problems, and even though you spend much time in the lab and at scientific meetings, your family does not feel neglected.
Hope you are doing fine, Take Care
/ghazal

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Ghazal my Dear,

I think I am not as bad as the military leaders of these historical times you describe in your mail. At least I always stay in contact with home, using mobile phone or skype ;-)

The history of the rise and fall of the persian empire in the 16th century, its defeat by the ottoman empire in the west and its link with the rise of the Moguln empire in the east is the background of Salman Rushdie”s novel “The Enchanting Florentine“. If you read it, you will be able to tell your dad the more private side of Shaybani, Barbur and Shah Ismail, because in this novel Rushie introduces a “lost” sister of Barbur. Her name is Qara Köz (or “black eyes”) , and she first becomes wife of Shaybani, than of Shah Ismail and finally of the ottoman general Argul, who is originally italianian and defeats Shah Ismail. The novel uses this magic realismen to show how a young, beautiful woman always changes from one winning horse to the next. But it also shows the price she has to pay for it, that she never really builds a home for herself and never raises children. This at least is the state on page 367, and there are another 108 to come. Maybe I read them tonight, maybe there will be an happy end for her.

In case there wont be a happy end for Qara Köz, do you want me to tell you the rest of the novel ?
Hope you have a nice evening, enjoy the spring, relax and don”t use your brother automatic e-mail-response program to send me an answer.

Take Care, my Dear
Michael

ELIZA – The Intelligent Answering Machine

Dear Michael,
sometimes I wonder if we don”t trust too much in the electronic communication, when one person writes some words to another person thousands of km away, and these words are converted into a sequence of bits and rush through computer chips and are converted into electric pulses or light waves, send back and forth to satellites until they finally reach the recipient. And the recipient for some reason does not question that the words he reads in the message are nothing else but the written thoughts that his friend has hammered into the keyboard thousands of km away.
Shouldn”t we be more cautious about the messages we receive day by day ? I don”t mean the mail I receive from you, I”m always sure that they come from you, cause they have their very unique style and always contain some code-words that mark them as authentic. But my younger brother, who is studying IT technology in the 2nd course now has shown me something they are doing currently. They got the project to develop a computer program that is able to write “fake answers” to an e-mail. I don”t know how they are doing it, but the program searches for some keywords in an incomming message, and than replies with some sort of standard sentences (that are usually not very complex or intelligent) which again contain the same keywords.
So my dear brother asked me to test his program. Therefore I send him an e-mail and within some micro-seconds already got an answer:

My Dear A.,
I send you my best wishes to persian New-Year. Did you received my present that I send you by post ? When I packed the parcel I cut my fingers with the scissors and had to put bandage on and now I can only use my left hand. I went with Shava to the mountains on Saturday, because with an injured finger the only proper thing to do is to go out for a walk in nature. We would have liked to stay there till Sunday, but I have no time because I have to prepare for the lecture at college. The students of the new curse will arrive tomorrow, and they want to be entertained properly. I hope you doing well and work hard to become the next Bill Gates or J.v.Neumann.
In love, your sister ghazal

Now have a look at the answer I received instantly from his program:

“Dear Sister ghazal,
O, I did not knew there was persian New-Year. What present you send, I did not received anything. O, you cut your fingers ? Interesting, why you need the scissors for this ! Did Shava liked the mountains ? What else did you do on Saturday ? So the students will come. I hope they will have fun.

Take Care
/your brother A.”

And now, what do you think ? Do you find that the program is doing a good job ? I know my brother was never very keen sending long letters to anybody, but at least he put his own (crazy) ideas into it. But the program that he wrote virtually only repeats what I wrote in my original message. I think it is better to carry on writing down our own thoughts, even though the answers may take a bid longer.

Hope everything is fine with you, Good Night.
Ghazal

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Ghazal my Dear,
So funny to read your experiences with your brother. Thanks god, it is just a technical project that sends you such standard and formal letters in response to a mail. The quality of a machine-based artificial intelligence was actully tested by one of the earliest and most influential computer scientist (Alan Turing) by setting up a similar device that you and your borther were using. Turing suggested, that an experimentalist should do two verbal dialogues in parallel behind two black curtains. Behind one of the curtains a human person should sit to conduct a dialogue with him, wherease behind the other curtain the artificial-intelligence machine had to be placed. If the experimentalist could not tell after a certain time where the talking machine was and where the person was, than according to A.Turing the machine has passed the criteria of having indeed artificial intelligence.
But I could imagine, that this also depends a lot on the experimentalist. Simple-minded people might get fooled very easily, they might even think that a mail-response from your brothers program comes from a real person. Other people who read and wright a lot are probably much more critical. I could imagine that you are extremely critical. I think it will not be possible for any machine to fool you. You have somethink like a seventh sense to tell what is real and what is fake.

There were several attempts among IT freaks to beat Alan Turings test. They were called Chatter-Bots and among them ELIZA was probably the most famous. ELIZA was such an artifical language dialoge program developed at MIT. The exciting thing was that it should play the role of a psychoanalyst, talking to a patient. When Weizenbaum developed ELIZA, it was the time of Flower-Power, Hippie-Music and mind-extending drugs for the young, but the elder generation discovered the healing power of psycho-therapy. I guess this was the motivation for Weizenbaum designing ELIZA as a psychatrists chatter-bot. But even though ELIZA impressed some people really a lot (they were told that the doctor has a bad flue and therefore talks to them from behind a courtain), dedicated linguists that used the Turing Test could tell that it was only a machine.

I hope you can sleep well and don”t carry on endless dialogues with a machine in your dreams.

Take Care, Ghazal,
Michael

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Hi Michael,
a last remark before midnight: Do you know why the computer program by Weizenbaum, that could participate in seemingly meaningful dialogues, was called ELIZA ? There was the character of Eliza Dolittle, a simple, uneducated person with a very basic language in G.B.Shaws play “Pigmalion” (later in the funny musical “May Fair Lady”). Two university professors, one of them was Mr. Higgins, made a bet: Higgins promised that he will “re-educate” Eliza Dolitte with brute force, give her not just elegant clothes but also a new language. And he will guide Eliza Dolittle to a reception of the high society and nobody should recognised that before she was selling flowers on the market every day. Guess what happend ?

Take care
/ghazal

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Hi Ghazal my Dear,

What is wrong with a girl that sells flowers all day long ?
(See, now you caught me responding to you in the answering-machine-style ;-) .
I promise I wont do it again. But don”t expect me to read G.B.Shaws “Pygmalion” now to answer your question. It is already after midnight, and I have to go for a walk with our dog.

I”ll tell you tomorrow about what I think about Eliza Dolittles qualities as a chatter-bot.

Take Care, Good Night
Michael

Schah-Nameh. Heroic Times.

EXHIBITION IN BERLIN PRESENTS FERDOUSIS “BOOK OF THE KINGS” (opened till June18th 2011)

In 2010 the world celebrated the tenth centenary of the completion of the Persian “Book of Kings”. Composed of more than 50,000 rhyming couplets, the “Shah-Nameh” is one of the greatest epics in the history of world literature. It is approximately twice as long as Homer”s epics and 20 times longer than the german “Nibelungenlied”. The Persian epic poem covers a phenomenal time span, telling the entire history of the old kings of Iran, from their mythical beginnings right up to the conquest by the Arabs in 651 BCE. The epic was written by the Persian poet Ferdousi (sometimes spelled “Firdausi”, 935-1020), who by his own estimation spent 25 years composing the work before completing it in 1010 BCE and dedicating it to the Ghaznavid ruler, Sultan Mahmud (r. 998-1020).

A Thousand Years of the Persian Book of Kings is held by the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin and the Berlin National Library, to highlight the history of Firdousi”s epic magnum opus and its significant role for the Persian national identity.

Shah-Nameh (The Book of Kings) is a classic among epic Persian poetry and recounts Iran”s mythical and historical past. It was written in Persian at a time when Arabic was the main scientific and literary language of Iran.

The romance of Zal and Rudaba, the Seven Stages (or Labors) of Rostam, Rostam and Sohrab, Siavash and Soudabeh, Rostam and Akvan-e Div, the romance of Bizhan and Manizheh and Rostam and Esfandyar are among the most popular Shah-Nameh stories.

The exhibition, which will run until July 3, 2011, also displays a rich and extremely rare Sassanid collection of the Museum of Islamic Art, illuminating the historical past of the mythical legends, Artdaily reported.

Visitors will be able to see around 50 manuscripts and folios from the Keir Collection, the National Library, and the Museum of Islamic Art as well as medieval ceramics, textiles, metalwork, weapons, and artifacts from the Sassanid collection.

There are also works on loan from the Berlin Museum of Asian Arts, the Berlin Museum of Ethnology and the Deutsche Historische Museum (DHM) and two German private collections.

Berlin State Library”s Oriental Department and the Museum of Islamic Art have seized upon the commemorations as an opportunity to illustrate the epic”s influence in more than 100 magnificent objects, among them loans from the Museum of Asian Art, the Ethnological Museum and the German Historical Museum. The city of Berlin happens to preside over a unique collection of “Shah-Nameh” manuscripts and single sheets, many of which rank among the most spectacular treasures of Persian book art anywhere in the world. Also on display are examples of decorative art that illustrate the epic”s influence on the various areas of daily life in Persia. The exhibition provides profound insight into the world of the great kings and courageous heroes and illustrates just what a central role this piece of world literature plays for the Persian national consciousness, even today.

Why the Fukushima nuclear disaster is good for nature

It is always worth to follow Monthy Pythons advise and ALWAYS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE, even in case of an accident that univocally is considered a major disaster for the civilized world and in Japan the biggest catastrophy since their defeat in WW2. At least here in Germany, the most prominent critics of nuclear energy are the greens, in close alliance with WWF and Greenpeace. And as we all know how the german Angst works so well and so absolute predictable, it was no wonder the Green Party managed to kick-out the conservative christian-democrats from their stronghold in Baden-Wuertemberg, just by pointing to Fukushima and reminding every voter in their state that it were the cristian-democrats who always support nuclear energy.
This, on the first glance, looked very straight for the green party, a clear “full-house” so to say. But in fact, they might have even won twice: Fukushima not only gave them the prime-minister post of Baden-Wuertemberg on a silver plate, but there might be even more important benefits in the long-term and on the global scale. I”m talking here about the Whales and Dolphins, who over the last years were slaughtered by the thousands to satisfy the desire of the japanese cuisine. Not the UN, nor Greenpeace or WWF could achieve, what the Fukushima accident did: a natural protection for these big naval mammals for at least one generation of animals. Remember, caesium 137, the strong gamma-isotope that was released into the japanese sea and into the pacific, has a physical half-life time of 30 years, and its biological half life time is not much shorter. It preferentially accumulates in the muscle-tissue of mammals, including whales and dolphins. For them, it does not bear a real health risk, so nobody of us should worry, and if Greenpeace and WWF do so, we all know it is just their business to beat the drum. In fact, muscle tissue is one of the most radio-resistent, so whales and dolphins will live as good or as bad as without caesium-137 in the ocean. But for us humans, since we always worry and we made the german Angst  one of our best export-goods, any knowledge that a few single atoms caesium-137 are in our steak or Sushi or Miso-Soup makes us sick right away. So the japanese whale-fishers and the violent Dolphin-Killers in Taiji will face some tough years to come. I guess the sale for whale and dolphin meat will drop by 99% soon. Unless some hard-liners such as Mr. “I-take-some-days-off”-Shimizu of Tepco, or Mr.”My-blue-jackets-is-a-fake-Levis”-Edano of the gouvernment or his imperial highness Mr.”I-love-you-all”-Akihito will demonstrate in front of the TV-cameras and on their web-sites how delicious whale-sushi and dolphin-soup still is, the popularity of this sea-food would go down to virtually zero.
We all know instinctively, that there always must be light, when there is shadow. Or as a good friend of mine who was cought by the idea of physical laws-of-conservation ones formulated it:  For every person on earth who stops crying, another one has to break-out in tears. The sum of all the tears in the world is therefore a fixed number. Therefore, we should not feel to much mercy when we see the japanese nuclear managers spreading around their fake tears and mourning and begging for pardon. We must know: for the whales and dolphins now starts a great time, they will live for the next decades a life without fear. Like the Jews still celebrate Purim as the rescue from a masacre planned by the persian minister Haman in the 5th century BC, such will the whales and the dolphins always commemorate the year 2011, when a devine hand blow up the Fukushima reactors and spilled the caesium-137 broth into the ocean to mark all naval mammals as unedible and unhuntable.
Or would it even be possible that not God in his wise decision triggered the earth-quake and than the tsunami, that hit Fukushima so badly ? Could it be that all the whales and the dolphins of the world united and made a big, big wave like we do on a much smaller scale in the bathing-tube, that hit the coolant-pumps and auxilary generators and electricity supply in Fukushima ? Don”t forget, how intelligent whales and dolphins can be: If you ever saw the movie “Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe”, you remember how they could smell the coming disaster and with a smile on their face (which in fact they always have) they said “So long, and thanks for all the fish“.
Does not matter who really did it, intelligent creatures (like the whales or dolphins) or super-super-intelligent creature (like god or the WWF), finally we should understand that it was worth it. This little nervous break-down around a japanse nuclear facility rescued the future life of our most loved naval creatures.

This Taste of Honey – ذوق عسل

Dear Michael,

I send you a link to a very nice song. I found it today while browsing through Shava”s records (real old vinyl-type ones). It is by Esther Ofarim, an israelian singer who was very popular in Iran before “79. During the time of the last Shah the cultural and political relations between Iran and Israel were very intense and free of major conflicts. I very much like her song “A Taste of Honey” or ذوق  عسل, not just because of the link to my name.

Have a nice evening, enjoy the song
/ghazal.

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Ghazal my dear,

Thank you so much for this song “A Taste of Honey”. When I listened to it, it brought something inside me to vibrate, like an accoustic deja-vu: I knew that I heard this melody many years ago, it was the title-melody of a saturday-afternoon TV serie, not really meant for children, but we kids were allowed to watch it. Don”t know why the director had choosen “A taste of Honey” as the title song for this serie, which was an epic about the construction of a dam, and although it was a west-german production, it glorified the working heroes at least as much as we knew it from the socialist propaganda in our own country. It is probably because I watched it every weekend while I was 10 or so, maybe over a period of more than a year, that embossed this melody in my memory for ever. But in the TV-serie, “A Taste of Honey” was played much faster, more jazz-style by a big-band and without a singer.

It was originally written by Bobby Scott and Rick Marlow as the intro for the New York premier of Shelagh Delaneys drama of the same title. It was covered by famous musicians such as Lionel Hampton, Quincy Jones, Chet Atkins, Woody Herman, The Beatles and the Hollies. Comparing Esther Ofarims version that you found among Shavas collection of old vinyls with the “Harry James Orchestra” reording below one gets an impression about the broad range of musical styles to which the original song and the story of the play-wright had inspired singers and musicians.

The jazz big-band version by the “Harry James Orchestra” was a performance at the Ed Sullivan show in 1966.

By the way, which of the two persian words in the song-title means “Asal” ?
عسل or ذوق  ?

It was interesting what you wrote about Israel and Iran and that they had such a fruitful and cooperative relationship during Shahs time. How do your parents see this ? I”m always surprised when I follow discussions on www.iranian.com, most of the writers also express a view that is so much different from the anti-Israel stereotypes of the Ahmadenishad gouvernment. As usual, the people are much more tolerant and open-minded, whereas the active politicians like to keep the fire of hate and violence burning.

I hope you are alright, and you make progress with your PhD project and also with the project of your life.

Take Care,
Michael

Norooz Full Moon

Dear Ghazal,

Thanks a lot for writing right away. The parcel was supposed to be a gift for Norooz, one of the “Haft Seen” you described in your Norooz-presentation.
For some reason, DHL could not deliver the parcel to your address (Sturgrand 7, 16199 Enskedebergen). I think that DHL is stupid,
or maybe I put a wrong label on the parcel ? Don”t know. In fact when I first got the message from DHL that they could not deliver,
I thought that you refused to take it. I thought “Ey Vay, maybe she has been afraid that the parcel might contain bad memories.”
But it does not, Ghazal, I promise you. It contains something nice, I”m sure you will like.
It is just a pitty it wont be in-time for Norooz any more, cause it is perhaps already on its way back to Germany now.
As soon as it is here, I”m going to send it again. Do you think it is safer to send it to your institutes address ?

I hope you have a nice time with your family and friends. I wish that the whole new year is full of happiness and success and emotional peace for you. I wish that you find satisfaction and excitement with your PhD project.
Don”t bother too much how other people see you, try to stay strong and confident with your own wishes.

There was a full-moon tonight again, and I managed to catch him while he tried to hide behind the samovar.

moon-and-samovar

hi michael,

the address is correct, so i really dont know whats wrong. but it is fine. thank you anyway.

my phd project is good. alot to do. not enough energy sometimes. but i try. tomorrow i have a presentation of my masterproject from munich. hope it will go well, it will be a bit hard since genetic is a hard subject for people that are not familiar with it. i just have a silly question, for the quantitative analysis. why did we use primers located between exons? how many did we use for each gene?

the “full-moon” looks more like the flash from your camera?

/ghazal

Arthur Brown aka Haji Firuz is doing the Norooz fire dance

Dear Ghazal,
On the occasion of the persian new-year, I”d like to send you some music.
Zoroastrian philosophy not only inspired Friedrich Nietzsche to write his central opus “Thus spoke Zarathustra”, but contemporary rock singers were equally influenced by this ancient faith. The idea that a divine spirit is present in nature, and it shows up in phenomenons such as fire or water had a renaissance in the era of new age and hippie-culture. Have a look at this wunderful piece of music by Arthur Brown (”I am the god of hell fire, and I bring you: FIRE”).
Arthur Brown, this very bizarre rock singer of the 70s considered himself a reincarnation of Zartosht (or Zarathustra). In the following performance Brown even tried to show up as Haji Firuz, the troubadur who ushers the persian new year with his songs and dances.

Once again Norooz Pirooz, Ghazal
Michael

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Dear Michael,
Well, this guy arthur brown really makes a very wild impression. I have never seen Hadji Firuz wearing fire on his head: usually he always stays above the fire. Are you sure that arthur brown has any relation to Zoroastrianism? I asked my mom about this, since she knows a lot about Zartoshd. Her comment was, that arthur brown reminds her more of the european carneval than on traditional persian Norooz. To be honest, I also saw people at last years munich carnival wearing costumes like arthur browns “Fire-Suit”. The whole idea of the persian Chahar-Shembeh-Suri (the night of the last wednesday before Norooz) is to jump over the fire but avoid getting touched by the fire. The red colour of his dress, however, is very Hadji Firuz style. It symbolizes the healthy and powerful new life of the new year. Therefore, on Chahar-Shembeh-Suri persian people ask:

Give me your beautiful red color
And take back my sickly pallor!

سرخی تو از من و
زردی من از تو

The music is not exactly the style I would listen to in the evening, when I seek for some relaxation. Do you remember the Paolo Nutini concert where we went last year in Munich ? This I liked a lot, it was also rock, but it was more melodic. It was really nice, and it was a very relaxing evening. Exactly what I needed so badly during all this hard work for my master-project. I still listen to his music from the CD, when I need some rest and inspiration.

Hope everything is fine with you. Soile was here to give a talk. She told me that you have very warm weather in munich now. Enjoy!
/ghazal

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Ghazal my dear,

It is really already very warm here in Munich, 25 degrees, almost like summer. If I watch out of the window, the cherry tree in front of the institute is in full blossoms.cherryblossoms
I already suspected that Arthur Brown”s wild habbit is not really your most favorite style. You always prefer “calm” music, right. But somehow I like him, even so he did not produce a lot of songs: he became more famous for his weired stage acts (always using fireworks). Once he even set himself on fire and had to be rescued by the security guys with a fire-extinguisher. Even more notorious became an incident at the Montreux Jazz Festival 1971: Brown again played around with some firework and set the whole Montreux Casino in fire. This whole story was quickly absorbed by the band Deep Purple, who within a day or so wrote a song “Smoke on the Water”. This immediately became a rock classic and climbed the top-ten for several weeks. And of course for the garage-band that we had just set-up with some school-mates in the late 70s, playing on odd east-german accoustic guitars to which steel-strings and DIY pick-ups were mounted and everything plugged into an old Wehrmacht vacuum-tube amplifier, of course this song (or at least the first few cords of it) was just the right one to annoy all the neighbours.

Hope you are happy, with or without me.
Michael

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Dear Michael,

What a funny story to imagine that you played in a garage-band this deep-purple song. I thought western music was forbidden in the east ? Was this what the neighbours found so annoying, that the young generation did not care any more about what is permitted and what is forbidden ? And you even had an old Wehrmacht-amp, I hope you at least removed the swastika from it ! Sorry, this sounds like you wanted to become the east-german version of “Rammstein”.

Take Care
/ghazal

PS: Don”t know if I am happy. To know this exactly, one needs a measure. Somebody ones suggested that you are only happy when you don”t have to think about happiness.

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Ghazal my Dear,

Are you about to turn into a rock-fan ? It would not be the first time that I see how a very elegant, educated and smart young lady from abroad suddenly outs herself as a Rammstein fan. But by the way, Rammstein ARE east-german. They were all playing before (in other bands) so-called polit-punk, and by this they did not only annoyed the neighbours, but the whole political system in the GDR. In terms of music quality it all was not really breath-taking, but it all had severe political implications. Very much the same as nowadays in Iran, as described in the movie “No one knows about persian cats”.

Take care, Ghazal

Michael

Ascending Moon above Munich Skyline

Hi Ghazal, my Dear,
Hope you are doing well with everything, with your PhD project and the project of your life (the later I always consider much more important, of course). Did you celebrate 8th of march in Sweden, the international womans day ? It is supposed to be to honour all working woman, therefore you deserve some congratulations as well.

I did a photo of the ascending moon above the Munich skyline. Don”t break out in laughter, please, but we have the TV olympic tower (the two red lights on the button right), that could be considered a bit of a skyline.

moon-over-skyline

Du you remember we went up the Olympic tower last year in summer, after we bought the persian carpet. I than hoped very much they will close the tower behind us, while we were on the platform in 200 m height, and we would have to stay there the whole night through.
But I guess you would have been very much scared, wouldn”t you ?

What else ? B. got serious ill, had to stay at home for a week. I. is also at home, cause her boyfriend is there and they went to the mountains. O. is busy with the red-fluorescent cells. Mike and me try to entertain the students. I”m always sad that somebody like you will never be there again.
Take Care

Michael

i Michael,

Nice picture, thank you.
I am fine thanx, trying to do a good project with phd and life. No I did not do anything special the 8th of march. But yes it was women day. It was also “Semla day”, eveyone eats semla. Dont know what it is called in english.
But it is not my favorite. so i did not eat.

Oh, hope that B. will be better soon. Nice that I. went to the mountains. And hope the students have fun in munich.

/ghazal

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Hi Ghazal dear,

Thanks for writing, and for keeping me up to date. I was thinking about you today, when I saw the pictures in TV how they measure children in Japan for radioiodine contamination in the thyroid. somehow, it has a lot to do with your MSc project here, don”t you think so ?
This morning on my way to the institute I was passing the BMW world, and they gave a Jazz-conzert there. It was an absurd atmosphere, hearing the music that tried to sound very relaxed (you would say “calm”), seeing the properly dressed Munich people with a self-confident expression of joy on their faces.
They did very well ignoring the catastrophy that is going on on the other side of the world. It seems so far away, like news from another universe. But it will effect all of us, sooner or later, does not matter if it is 8000 km away like Japan or “just” 1310 km like Stockholm.

Such events are not part of our life planning, right ? We would be completely paralysed every morning if we would know the omnipresent
danger of life beeing wiped away by earth quake, Tsunamis or blasting atom reactors. People could not love each other any more, I think, let away doing somethink creative like building a house, writing a paper or a piece of music, working on a 3 year PhD project.
Somehow we have to have the ability to ignore what is going on around us.

Is “Semla” probably the persian word for semolina ?

(Sorry, but I could not open the picture that you send). Is the persian word for it
سمولینا ?
It is coarsly grinded wheat or corn (like flour, but more like a granulate ?) If it is this, I have to admit I liked very much when I was kid, and still eat it if I”m a sort of very exhausted. You said you don”t like, but maybe it depends on how it is cooked. You have to try when it is cooked in sweet milk, then it is realy tasty.
It is a pitty very much, Ghazal, I never cooked something for you while you were here. You know I am very good in cooking a meal called Plow. I learned it from a friends mother, she was from Usbekistan, and Plow is their national meal After I tried it several times, she invited me and I had to do it again under her supervision. Than we all eat it and at the end I got a certificate from her (no joke !!!). I have to say, I probably do the best Plow in central europe, and this was also confirmed when I fed last year a whole birthday party of 45 people with it.
Of course I am as usual interested in the cross-cultural relation with plow, I knew it is very common in Turkey (Pilaw) and Aserbaidshan.
I asked Omid very often how it is in Iran. He just could not figure out the word.
But meanwhile I know, the persian word is Polo (I learned from www.iranian.com), or
پلو
It is so tasty, you can not imagine (if it is done with lamb and with carrots and decorated with fresh tomato). I think you would have molten away, if I would have had the chance to cook it for you. Maybe another time I will do.

Is Semla day already the beginning of Norooz ? I”m going to send you something for Norooz, I hope you will like. It is in fact something that was originally yours, but you forgot it here, and I did some decorative work on it, so it looks more pretty now. It will be a surprise, I hope you don”t mind.

Life is a mystery, don”t you think so ? But it is also a big revelation, occasionally.

Take Care, Ghazal

Michael

PS: I will never say again “poor Ghazal”, this was stupid, I know. You are stronger than you appear, and it is good for me to know.

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