What means “Ey Vay” ?

At university I had a very good friend from Jordan. He was palestine, much younger than the rest of us physics students and extremely gifted. But he did not only had an extraordinary mathematical talent, he was also very familial with classical european music and literature. On the other hand, he had a very firm opinion about Israel, whom he completely refused the right of existence. About the last point we had a never-ending intellectual fight, whereas for most other issues, philosophy, science, values of life we felt quite similar. During the friendship with him, Ismail, I learned a lot about tolerance and that different points in some aspects of life does not has to result in a confrontation, but in fact can be a gain for both. I knew that he was muslim, praying 5 times a day, and he knew I am bloody atheist, drinking a glass of wine here and than and having sympathy for Israel.

Thanks to his permanent supply of records from west-Germany, I used to visit him to listen to some rare pieces of music. Once he brought from his shopping trips to West-Berlin Strawinskys “Le Sacre du Printemps”, played by the Berlin Philharmonics. When I heard the first tunes by the oboe, with the sudden entry of the rhythm strings, I got completely struck. Maybe this day I had already a glass of wine, but together with the music I felt more and more in one of the fairy tales of 1001 nights. Inspired by the idea of the “Sacre” I asked Ismail if he knew something about this new student, which must be from another muslim country, because she sits the whole afternoon in the state library wearing a head scarf. But I told him that even though she wears the scarf, one could see how beautiful she was and that she had the most amazing blue eyes. So I asked Ismail if he could find out her name, what he did, but only after telling me that any further intentions to meet her were very likely a waste of effort. Anyway, a few days later Ismail came to me and said “The girl you saw at the library is Samira. She is from Syria, and daughter of a high ranking Baths party leader. They are all instructed not to make any personal contacts to ordinary germans. And by the way, all of us foreign students coming to your country had to sign an agreement at the east-german embassy, promissing that we will avoid any privat relationship to german student-mates or people on the street. So you see, even our occasional get-together to listen to music, talk about quantum-mechanics and Einsteins philosophy and to argue about middle-east politics, all this might be already illegal. What you think they will call it if you start here to court a student girl from Syria ?”. In my naive understanding of friendship (and in these times friendship in the official speach of politics meant “friendship between all peace-loving nations”) I just rejected his very rational arguments and the next day went to the library again and asked the girl “You are Samira, right ?”. Under her scarf I almost could see how she wrinkled her brows, since it appeared that except of her name “Samira” she did not understood a single word. What I did not knew, that except of Ismail, who spoke fluently several languages and quickly made the brilliant jokes in german, most of the foreign students from rich countries had their privat translator, who sat next to them during all lectures and seminars and therefore making any attempt to learn the language of their host country superfluous. Therefore, our first conversation was very limited. Today I have to laugh about my silly idea to seduce a girl with the only arabic phrase I knew: “Salam Alejkum”. But at least I could invite her to “coffee”, which I was pretty sure must sound similar in arabic. She shook her head and said “Chaj”, which fortunately I knew from russian, where it also means “Tea”. So we went to the library buffet, which was located in the basement and had the chic of a station toilet. I could imagine that for her drinking a tea or coffee had another cultural implication, and this filthy buffet with its fuggy smelling air would hamper the last bit of delight, even of this third-class tea. Therefore I made signs to her to leave this filthy room with our cups and sit outside on the concrete stairways of the old library building.

Our conversation resembled very much the one between Robinson Crusoe and Friday: pointing to various things around us we would give them the names in our two languages. This way I learned that chestnut was “chestanub”, honey is “Al Asal” and eyes are “orjoun”. We probably met several times in and outside the library, and I was following Ismails warning that inviting a girl that wears a head scarf anywere else could cause a serious problem for both sides. But even the occasional encounter between the two of us on the stairway outside the library must have attracted the attention of some watchdogs from either her or my country. Somebody must have been concerned that we might find our own very individual interpretation of friendship between the nations. And they might have also kept a record of the progress we made in our conversation, which became more and more intense, but absolutely ununderstandable for any outsider, who would have tried to sneak into our talks. For our own use we had created a sort of german-english-arabic Esperanto, that to anybody else must have sounded as a completely cryptic code. But I never considered, and neither did Samira, that Ismails advise not to meet each other somewhere else than at the library for moral reasons was indeed the most foolish thing to do. Because we were sitting there like on an open display: visible for everybody who wanted to keep a record of the frequency and intensity of our short, but regular meetings. And this was perhaps seen as an open demonstration of disobedience, for two totalitarian countries a heresy much worse than would have a secret get-together been.

The security forces acted fast, silently and efficient: without any warning Samira was send home to Syria with a couple of hours notice. And since we did not had telephone, let alone e-mail or mobile in the mid 80es, she could not even say good bye. I also had forgotten to give her my address, since for us the stairway of the library was always the natural place to meet. After a couple of days not seeing her I asked Ismail if he could find out what happened to her. His legendary talent in physics has made him an admired student not only for us, but in particular for most other foreign students from middle-east countries as well. So it took him only a short talk with a guy from the syrian students group to find out that Samira was back home. The explanation was that she came to Germany only for a short summer school in aerodynamics, and this course had finished now. Funny enough, the books she always read at the library were all about high-energy nuclear physics.

Ismail with some degree of satisfaction said: “You see, I told you never try to court a girl with a head-scarf. You have to wait until somebody of her family lifts her scarf for you”. When I told him, that Samira ones already shifted her scarf backward, showing with or without intention some of her chestnut-coloured, curly hair and that she might not fit into his conventional idea of a modern girl, he band backward, started laughing and said “Oh Boy”. Ismails “Oh Boy” was a sort of final sentence of this short but inspiring relation to a girl with a head scarf that she was just about to lift without any help. It was like the two words “The End” on the final credits of a nice, long movie.Until recently, and still entangled in the belief that a german-english-arabic Esperanto is an easy way to bridge language-boarders I was convinced that “Oh Boy” means just “Oh Boy”, a very common vocative in english with a connotation that lays somewhere between compassion and admonition.

But only recently, 24 years later, I heard again this phrase, and now it sounded more like “Ey Vay !”. It was during an interview with one of the students who took part in the 2009 demonstrations in Teheran, shown in Ali Samadi Ahadis wonderful movie “The Green Wave”. And here, the interview was subtitled, and I had to learn that Ismail was using the same “Ey Vay !”, meaning “Oh God” when he commented my reckless idea of courting Samira. In these years in the late 80es the islamic “revolution” in Iran was just 10 years ago, and occasional reports about police forces in Teheran that would fix womans head-scarfs with pins on their head were taken as US propaganda. Still caught in the memories of Samira and her rather lavish usage of her scarf I did not had enough fantasy to imagine that a few strains of hair leaking under it could provoke a violent and inhuman reaction by the police. And I could not imagine that 24 years later an iranian student would talk about much worse violence on the streets of Teheran, using the phrase “Ey Vay !” to express complete frustration and disgust.

Life and Politics

Hi Ghazal my Dear,

I have to confess that today I broke the promise that I gave to you last year in summer. I then told you that I wont go to watch any of the Stieg Larsson movies of the Millenium Triology.

But since the first part of this triology (“Verblendung” or swedish “Män som hatar kvinnor”) was shown tonight on TV I thought I should watch it and build my own opinion (because my refusal from last year was solely based on what I heard from other people). I have to say: the movie even exceeded my worst expectations. I thought it is a crime movie, where a murder (a minority) is hunted by the police or the by normal people (the majority).
But in the movie, the violence and sadism was ruling everywhere. There was brutality right from the beginning, on the street against this young lady, physical violence without reason, coming from apparently nowhere.
And even the few people who did not show physical violence against each other (like the journalists at the newspaper or the business-people on the island) expressed an frightening mental coldness. I can not remember to have seen a single smile or somebody laughing during the whole movie. It seem so damned cold, as if the entire society suffers from a deep frustration.
And the violence against woman and against children was only the most extreme side of this coldness. It made me feel sick to watch it. My opinion about the whole subject has not changed a bit, it only became more solid.
I think that this violence against woman and kids, raping and murder, should not become subject of literature or movies. It should be hunted by the police and punished by the society very fiercely, but should not be used by writers or movie-directors to get famous with. In this instance, Lars Gustafsson is so much different from Stieg Larsson. I don”t say that Larsson had bad, egoistoc intentions when he wrote his Best-Seller “Millenium”, of course he raised an issue that perhaps the swedish mainstream media tried to avoid for too long time: violence of men against woman or the fear to show emotions openly . And this is true for both sexes, it is not only that men are hesitant to show feelings that would question their image of the strong country-guy, collecting hunting trophies and stay cool even if they have just killed a female elch who was mother of a baby deer. It is similar for woman, who are forced to show up as the world-leader of emancipation. Therefore, if you see each year the row of the candidates at the Miss World Election from all over the world, the south-american beauties and the asian girls and the african black magic woman, it is so easy to spot the swedish candidate: she has short cut hair, small lips, a musculus body proofing that she spends plenty of hours in the gym. And she usually wears glasses, even if she does not need them, only to remind men of the fear that she could be as cruel as their ground school head teacher. This makes me wondering if in Sweden an un-declared competition is running of who of both sexes is able to hide its natural feelings best.
I think it is an important issue to raise, and Stieg Larsson did right to do so. But at the same time he was trying to become a best-seller, and for this aim he misused the issue. He showed in detail the monstreous murder orgies of some maniacs, and he mixed it all with politics and a very boring love story and with the issue of lesbian love and the issue of big financial companies and their hidden businesses and the issue of the evil russians who re-organized prostitution in Sweden. And there, you feel, he tries – with much success – as the best seller lists all show – to find an apetizer subject for every reader. Lars Gustafsson is completely different, he is a classical fiction writer, he just constructs in his novels a different world. But this world, and the persons that act therein, are so different from the canonical swedish or west-european in talking about their dreams, that his books will never enter the top-selling lists, but may once get the Nobel-Prize.
With the Stieg Larsson movies I had the same problem as with the Holocaust. I don”t want to see a movie about mass murder against the Jews. The Holocaust against the Jews I think goes back to same mental disorder as in the case of violence against woman: it has to do with somebody – either the Nazis or the rapist – feeling weak and useless and therefore doing violence against an innocent person, thereby feeling mighty and powerful for a moment. It is all quite clear, but it is sad.

I hope, Ghazal, that the whole Stieg Larsson movie is a severe exaggeration of the situation in Sweden. I always had the idea that Sweden is a very social society, everybody very helpful, everything very safe (some even said “too safe”).
But the movie showed the opposite, a shocking
image of a society that always tries to cover all problems that could spoil the image of harmony.
I was living long enough in country called GDR, that was notorious to cover up every single aspect of live, that did not fit into its self-constructed image of a successful, progressive society with all people beeing nice to each other and in love to the ruling party and the gouvernment. This, finally, lead to a complete collapse of the whole state virtually over night.

And probably the most intelligent analysis about the reason for this collapse was written by a rather young, unknown psychologist, Hans-Joachim Maaz. His book “Emotional Blockade” shows in a very convincing way how the attempt to fit emotions into a dogmatic political system (does not matter whether it is socialist-progressive or western emancipated and succesful) first has deterious effects on the psyche of the people and at the end makes a whole society sick.

It is alway better to speak out (and maybe laugh) about your emotions, than hiding them.

hope you don”t have this problem, although you are part of the swedish society, it is much more important that you have your mom and Shava as good friends to .

Take Care, Michael

PS: I just looked outside, because I could not believe the sound coming from the garden. But it is indeed a nightingale. So amazing to hear her singing, although it is just mid of February.
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Dear Michael,

So you did not like stieg larsson. I liked it. not all movies are friendly and nice. some are brutal. well sweden was a very safe and good place. but it is just getting worse. the last non-safe news was the limit i think, the bomb that was exploded by a suicide bomber in stockholm. But there is a general atmosphere of an underlying, hidden violence, you are right. Last year a maniac presented a gun in a big department store and shot down several innocent people. And at last years general elections some other extreme-right-wings got seats in the parlament. But there are also signs of hope, for instance a young iranian immigrant (Hanif Bali) was elected to represent Stockholm Solna in the Rijksdag.
I think he has a good program, “Let Love Rule”, but I have some doubts if the parlament is the right place to fight for this.
My interpretation would rather be, that a lot of young ladies will fall in love with this extremely handsome young guy, and at the end this love will rule him.

Lets see, how he manages

Take Care
/ghazal

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Ghazal my Dear,

I had a look at Hanif Balis home page, and I have to admit if I would have been a girl I would also fall in love to him. Of course he has to be on Facebook, surrounded by thousand of female “friends”, who would ealier be called “Disciples”.
My experience here in Germany is that political business after a while destroys the human character. After some years in the political threadmill the people become very cynical. It is better to stay in science, or culture, or do your own business, where you don”t depend so much on others.

The most important is to stay free, to avoid living in a cage. Politics is the worst, I think, and I hope that Hanif Bali finds a way out, before it is too late.

(Ghazal, maybe you are curious to see when my resource of subjects to write mails about will be finished. I have to tell you, I still have a lot to write.
It even gets more from day to day. This is life. Its fascinating.)

O.k., I have to admit that our exchange of ideas is a bit in an imbalance. Sometimes I feel as if we play tennis, but we don”t see each other. So I play the ball over a high wall, and I assume you are on the other side, but probably you are not always there on the other side, but most of the time you are in the lab or at home watching TV or with friends at a party or out shopping. But I don”t know when you are there and when you come back, because I can”t look over this high wall. Only very rarely you come around and for a few minutes you enter the tennis-field on the other side. And it will only be a maztter of chance that I play a ball over the wall in exactly this moment and you play the ball back. And this, usually, makes me smile again, only because I hope that you were smiling as well, about my long lasting confidence that on the other side of the wall it is not the tennis-court cleaner that kicks back the ball back, but you .

(In reality, Ghazal, I don”t play tennis. Leonard and Marina play, but for me it is too boring.)

I hope you are alright, and not (as I recently suggested) too tired, sick, fed up, busy …..
but you just left a while for shopping or watch TV or went out for a party.

Take Care
Michael

Meeting of the Curly Haired in Teheran

Sometimes it does not need much more than this …
And who will doubt that the future of Iran lays in the hand and hearts of its young generation (پارک ملت‎ Pārk-e Mella).

source: http://naafass.blogspot.com

Miscellaneous Points

Ghazal F wrote:
Hi Michael,
Why would anyone tell you these things. I mean you were not mean to me. you helped me alot, and I will never forget how much you helped me. The only thing that maybe was a bit hard was that you saw me more than a student and friend. So it was a bit hard for me to make you understand.. But you did not harm me in anyway.

from the weekend when you helped your friend moving, it was a nice guesture of you. I can only see that your family loves you and that they have missed you that day. maybe you could take them with you to help your friend. I dont think that you did anything wrong. you could be with them on the sunday. hope the silence was broken soon.

So you did not like stieg larsson. I liked it. not all movies are friendly and nice. some are brutal. well sweden was a very safe and good place. but it is just getting worse. the last non-safe news was the limit i think, the bomb that was exploded by a suicide bomber in stockholm, in the city.
hope everything is fine with you.

/ghazal

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Ghazal my Dear,
1. Stieg Larsson “Millenium” vs. Asghar Farhadi”s “Darbareye Ely”
Last Sunday the last serie of the Stig Larsson “Millenium-Trilogy” went on TV.
Naja, was again not my favorite. I”m so happy to had the chance watching “Darbareye Ely”, I much more could identify with the characters in this low-budget iranian movie, even so it was subtitled (Stig Larsson was dubbed, of course). I really would like to recommend you to watch “Ely”. Maybe you also feel that she is a bid like you.

2. Imbalanced Mood and Superstition
Today I.G.V. asked me why I am always in good mood, sometimes even euphoric. She found this unusual and suggested that I have not experienced any punishment for too long time (i.e. not having been verbally kicked-in-the-ass by somebody). This is in part true:
But I am also sometimes in bad mood (for instance if I don”t hear from you for too long time). But usually I avoid other people then, so nobody recognize it.
But her remark that I have not been punished by somebody for too long time is very close to what I also suspect. You remember, Ghazal I don”t believe in god at all, but what I perhaps never told you is my awful superstition. I”m always afraid of the bad destiny, that I do something wrong and than I fear punishment. And it was in particular when I reconsider my last year, when I (as you know better than anybody else) took from life what I liked. For about half a year I left my role of the daily treadmill, and challenged the destiny by spending every free minute with you (either physically or in imagination). I thought that nobody had the right to intervene with my craziness (except you, of course). O.k. I have to admit it was nice, like a wonderful gift that 80% I was grabbing with force and 20% you were given with generosity.
And because I had this extraordinary time last year (that I perhaps never deserved), I”m now afraid that this year I have to “pay back” for the happiness that I enjoyed. I”m afraid something dramatic will happen to me this year: maybe a bad accident, or stroke, or our house burns down or I will be put in prison for wrong allegations. Maybe this is why I try to be in good mood every day before this happens.

3. Alireza from Toronto
Do you remember I once wrote you about the PhD Alireza from Toronto. We are still in contact, and we translated together some german Wikileaks documents about internal politics in Iran.
Alireza also likes skying like me, so I invited him to the Universities skying race next week here in Garmisch (I already did some training last Sunday, have a look here. Now Alireza decided he would like to come to Munich as Postdoc (not to our institute, but to the Technical Universities sports science department, where he wish to work as a Bio-Mechanic).

4. “Shy Guys” at the Bayerischer Hof Night Club
Yesterday night we went with 2 friends to the Bayerischer Hof nightclub. It was the most impressive band I have ever seen there. Three of the 5 musicians probably weighted together 500 kg (!!!!!), the two remaining ones 100 kg. But their music was phantastique.
Today in the office I was listening to the CD that you once gave me with persian music, and found that although the two music styles are quite dissimilar, they both bring the same kinds of neurons to respond: those for true soul music.

5. Are they charge you for sending the E-mails ? Ghazal, I have to ask you a silly question: there are so many things that differ between different countries. I always took it as granted that e-mails can be send free-of-charge. But is it possible that in Sweden you have to pay for it ? I mean, since you are back home you send so rarely a mail. If you need stamps (you know these little colored pieces of paper one has to stick on letters and postcards), I can send you some.

I hope that you are alright, my Dear, and that you send some words.

Take Care
Michael

32 years of unfreedom and violation of human rights

Todays 32nd anniversary of the islamic revolution in Iran hardly gives any reason for celebration. Initially enthusiastically welcomed by many progressive people around the world – including the socialist countries and churches – it soon became clear that this revolution brought to the iranian people anything else than freedom from corruption or an end to a totalitarian leadership.
The last three decades in Iran were not only hallmarked by oppression of any free thoughts and violation of human rights, but also by a growing corruption among the religouos, political and armed forces. An article by B.Kalnoky and C. Wergin published recently in the german newspaper “Welt am Sonntag” describes the internal battle for economic influence between these ruling forces (Translated version see here).
There is hope, however, that the strength of the people of Iran, their cultural heritage and traditional civil values will overcome the current regime.

Darbareye Ely

hi michael,

I did not knew before that UV-light is also essential for our body to produce vitamine D. Interesting aspect, I have to include this into my PhD-project. So maybe after UV-exposure my TK60 cells are really better of, cause they finally get some vitamine D after spending weeks in the dark incubator ? ;-) And what do you say now: Last year you have been wondering why I prefer to walk home instead of taking the bus. I then told you it is just relaxing for me to let my thoughts float freely. Now it could be that intuitively I knew that it is good to spend some time out in the open to reconstitute my vitamine D reservoir.

I already saw the movie “Darbareye Ely” (what means “all about ely”) about two years ago, after it received the Silver Bear Award at the Berlin film festival. But I watched it again yesterday with Shava.

I liked the movie, although it was no easy entertainment. It had no Happy End, but a Tragic End. The story starts very relaxed, showing three young families (including Ahmad, brother of one of the women, who just came from Germany where he divorced) spending a weekend at a seaside cottage at the Caspian sea. The three families have the silly idea to bring together the lonely Ahmed with the baby-sitter Elly, although they know that she is engaged with another man in Teheran. Whereas all the three couples and Ahmed start to make stupid jokes about this plan, laugh about Ely when she is not around and all appear very superficial to me, Ely herself is much more closed. She is a girl with some mysteries, she keeps secrets and does not like the continuous jokes about the attempted matchmaking a lot. She tries to do the job that she was officially hired for: looking after the little kids of the three families. She frequently calls her mom, who is ill, and after one day she decides that it is better to return to Teheran. The three couples don”t want to let her go, they hide her luggage and her mobile phone. She says that she has to leave and would even walk home. The three couples and Ahmad ignore her and start to play Volleyball and go shopping. Ely helps the kids to fly a kite, but suddenly one of the little boys falls into the water and almost dies. The three man interrupt their game, suddenly get panic and jump into the sea, so finally the boy is rescued. But after some minutes they realize that Ely is missing. And suddenly, the relaxed relationship between the three couples and Ahmed turn into aggression and hate. Everybody accuses the others of being responsible for the disaster.

After one day, indeed Elys dead body is found in the sea: She obviously died while trying to rescue the little boy. The three couples now have to inform some relatives of Ely about the accident, and they can only find Alireza, the man to whom Ely was engaged since three years. They find out his telephone number and ask him to come, claiming that Ely is just ill. When he arrives at the site, finding out that she in fact died, he breaks down. The three couples don”t want to admit that Ely was only invited to this weekend trip to match her to the divorced Ahmad. They try to make Alireza believe that Ely was hired exclusively as a baby-sitter. So they want to get around the conflict by adding more and more lies on top of each other. You can feel how their only concern is to get away with their responsibility.

I think Asghar Farhadi, the movie director, tried to show that this practice of organizing relationships for somebody is bad. It is based on an arrogant belief that relatives know what is good for their son or brother or daughter, and they can easily find a suitable partner. It is obvious that Ely hates this, since she is not sure about her 3 year long engagement with Alireza. But the three stupid couples and Ahmad think, that they have the right to interfere with her emotions. They make impolite jokes about Ely, they lie, and they don””””t respect her privacy. They are to superficial to see, that Ely is full of doubts about her future, and that she does not want to be pushed into a new relationship. She has thoughts that are not for the public, emotions that she does not want to show around. At the end, this stupid idea of pushing two person together leaves behind two victims: a physical one (Ely, who dies) and a mental one (Alireza, who breaks down emotionally). The bad think is that the three couples continue to lie to Alireza although they see how much he suffers from Ellies death: They tell him that Ely knew from the beginning that the weekend-trip with the three families was intended to bring her together with Ahmad. By insisting on this lie, the three couples so cruel leave the mourning Alireza believe, that his girl-friend Ely was searching for an easy adventure with another man. But Ely, in fact, never agreed with this, she said she only joins the company to look after the kids.

I would like to hear what you think about the movie.

take care
/ghazal

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Ghazal my Dear,

Tonight I went to see the movie “Darbareye Ely”. It was shown in one of the very small cinemas here, which are specialized on Arthouse movies.

Although you had told me already a lot about it before, it was nice to see it. After the first 5 minutes of the movie, however I thought that we might talk about two different things, cause it started so nice and relaxed, when they drove through the tunnel and all were just shouting for fun. And then they had this short stop-over at a small river, and I immediately recognised the russian Samovar, because we have exactly the same one (as part of a big collection of even older ones). And in the beach cottage, I recognised the old russain fridge, type “Wolga”, cause we have the same one in our cottage in Bulgaria. So initially I was a bid distracted by pictures, also had problems to follow the subtitles and at the same time understand the relationship between all the characters and their names (you should have provided me with a sort of set-list of all character and who is married to whom and which kid belongs to which couple). Anyhow, after a while I got the impression that all the seven characters are interchangeable, they looked differently but acted similar. The only exception was Ely, who was mysterious. When she disappeared after the accident with the boy I was hoping for about an hour, that she might not have died in the sea, but just left the place to escape the silly jokes and the attempted match-making. When she was eventually identified in the mortuary it was really sad and I was almost ready to leave the cinema.

Ely reminded my a lot of you, Ghazal. She was also calm and the exact opposite of the loud and superfiscial society around her. She had secrets, that she wanted to keep for herself. She had an aura of pride and aristocracy, which stoud in sharp contrast to the other characters who never thought about the right of privacy or secrets. It is a pitty that it was Ely who died in the movie. I so much wished to see her finding a new live, deciding about her own future, to stay strong and nice and get happy.

As usual , I wish you all the best, success with the project, happyness in daily life but also exciting dreams.

Take Care, Ghazal.

Michael

Sunlight and the genetics of skin pigmentation

Dear Ghazal,

Do you remember that we once talked about UV-exposure and skin pigmentation ? You send in November some papers about it, and how this is regulated.
There is an other aspect, and this relates to inherited genetic differences (i.e. a problem that is similar to your MSc project and the search for germline variations). Recently I found an interesting article that came up with a nice explanation for the reduction of the skin pigmentation during the migration of humankind to the northern hemisphere (from their origin in Africa about 100 000 years ago).

The reason is that UV-radiation has not only a detrimental effect (by damaging the DNA and potentially causing skin cancer, as you perhaps know better than anybody else), but it is also essential for the production of vitamin D in our body (important for skelettal development and other biological processes).
If humans during their migration from africa to the north would have kept their dark skin, the lower UVB level in europe would have caused a severe vitamine D deficiency. Therefore, reducing skin pigmentation genetically gained a survival benefit (since with less dark skin, more UVB reaches the dermis and more vitamine D can be produced).
Therefore, if dark coloured people move to the northern hemisphere for longer time, they might start to suffer from vitamine D deficiency. There is only one exception, and these are the inuit living in northern Canada and Greenland. They have relatively dark skin, but live with low UVB level. Their only way to get sufficient vitamine D is by eating raw meat from seals (in particular their liver is full of vitamine D).

The full paper about this is here:

I hope, Ghazal, you will have a sunny weekend, so you get enough UV to produce vitamine D.
You are lucky anyhow, since your light skin is the best condition to live in the north and stay healthy.

Take Care, Enjoy everything

Michael

PS: Have I already wrote you “Thanks” for the Nowruz power-point presentation that you send ? I think I forgot, sorry for this.

PPS: There is an iranian movie in the cinema here, called “Darbareye Ely“. I will probably go and watch. Have you seen it or heard about ?

Relax with the kinetic sculpture

Hi Ghazal my Dear,

Reading you last e-mails I got the impression that you are most excited if I send you links to some “moving pictures” (the origin of the word MOVIE, as you perhaps know). The german translation is KINO, which comes from french CINEMATOGRAPH, meaning “moving or kinetic image” and what gave rise to the english CINEMA.

Why I tell you all this stuff ? Not only because I remember the films we saw together here in Munich, and the nice time we had before and afterward.
There is another reason, and this I discovered last weekend at the BMW museum (can”t remember if you went there with your family or with Shava). Perhaps the most impressive object in the museum is the so-called “kinetic sculpture”, an arrangement of steel balls hanging on wires and thereby can all be individually moved up and down controlled by a machine. And this generates the most astonishing images of slowly moving 3D-sculptures.

I am almost sure, Ghazal, you will like this. And I am also sure that you work hard these days, same as you did during your MSc project here, and therefore you deserve some relaxing videos at night.

Enjoy, Take Care

Michael

As always, I hope you are doing fine and stay as nice and charming and strong as you have always been.

PS: Had a look at the swedish word for cinema, and this is Biograph. No clue what “Bio” means therein. There is a type of apple, which is called Boskoop, but this I guess is a coincidental similarity. And Cinema is written in Persian as
سينما.
And here, you see, I don”t even know how this is pronounced. So many things I”d like to ask you.

Social Networks and Loneliness

Hi Ghazal, my Dear,

Hope you are well up, although I have not heard from you for a while. I”m afraid I might have written something confusing or unintentionally something that you felt as assaulting. We had a very emotional argument today in the institute about the value of social networks and whether each of us or even the entire institute should be present in Facebook. Some believe it is essential, to stay visible to others (but to be honest, there are science-specific social networks a lot, like PubMed or LAbome, Wikigenes and others. They are probably most efficient to meet and stay in contact with other scientist). But I agree, to be visible to the general public there is perhaps no way around Facebook. Using this, we might soon be contacted by celebrities who want to use our Cre-Lox gene targeting method to correct the shape of their nose or to get rid of their double-chin. We might also be asked by anxious people about the risk coming from all the atoms in their body. I”m seeing forward to discuss issues like those with them.
The general attitude among the people here in the lab towards facebook was pretty ambigious. IVG was absolutely in favor of it, praising its cabability to stay in contact with friends worldwide. BSB and myself were very proud to be social and very communicative folks without having long lists of Facebook friends. And there were even some, like ZB and OH who claimed that they are post-Facebook generation, i.e. they had a Facebook account but were unsatisfied with it and deleted their accounts.

I very much see a misconception of long lists of so-called “Friends” at the social networks and the value of some long-lasting and solid personal relations, some that are not just for the sunny days but on which you can also rely if you need help. Sometimes I got the impression that the social networks are weak networks, they seem to be devoid of any personal responsibility. The possibility to opt-out of a Friendship just by clicking a button makes it so much easier to avoid any commitment to people you know. I”m convinced that one should accept also difficulties in a relation, and not just choose an easy way-out. I recently heard a paraphrase by german actress, who after some personal tragedies still manages to make a very happy appearance. She said “If life gives you a box of lemons, you better ask to have salt and tequilla with it.”
Of course for you, Ghazal, I hope there will very rarely be lemons, but a lot of apples, sumac berries and oranges, not just for Norooz but the whole year through.

TAke CAre

Michael

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hi michael,
the three fruits you mentioned at the end of your letter are only a small selection of what is typical for persian new year. I”m going to send you my kucha-pecha presentation that I gave last year at the schneeferner-house to the other MSc students.
Facebook becomes very important if you are away from home, from your family and friends, or if you have to change home frequently. I therefore understand IVG a lot, because like myself she travelled a lot when she was student, master-student, PhD. Like her, I also used facebook a lot when I lived in London one year and last year in munich. But for me, the real relations in life where you meet people face by face are of course superior. I also found that such relationships are much more solid, and you can rely on somebody if you need help. I think you have to have a real exchange of thoughts between two persons, and a track of giving and taking to realy feel bound to somebody. In contrast, one might collect endless lists of “friends” in facebook and still be completely lonely.
I recently read an interesting study in the journal Science about Loneliness and general Health. The full paper is here.
What I found very clear, the author states that “Some people are socially isolated but they are not lonely. By contrast, some people are lonely even if they have a lot of social contacts.”
And the authors found very interesting correlations between loneliness and the risk for several diseases, including stroke, dementia and metabolic disorders. The long lasting assumption, however, that loneliness can cause cancer has been disproven in this study.
Maybe it would be an funny project to investigate, if the number of “Facebook Friends” that people have on their accounts is linked to the frequency of various diseases. Than maybe in the near future you might see a prescription from your doctor saying: “Diagnose: You have got migraine. Suggested therapy: Reduce the number of “Friends” by 50%” or “Jouvenile Diabetes type 2: Stop using the internet at all and ride the bike for 1 hour every day”.

Oh boy, so much things to care about. And we are still trying to see the minuscle effects of irradiation.

Hope you are okay, take care (but don”t take the study about loneliness too personally)
/ghazal

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Hi Ghzal my Dear,

Why you think I might take the study by John Cacioppo et al from Chicago about the health effects of loneliness personally ? I don”t feel lonely, not at all. If I say that I miss you, it does not mean I”m lonely. I manage very well to keep myself busy, here at the institute, at home with my family and house and the dog and playing music and reading books. But none of these activities take away the feeling that I lost something very precious when you left.
With the study design I have to check the original paper by Cacioppo et al. I would like to see how the study was done. I guess, like people always design the epidemiologic studies it was a case-control study. The problem therein is that the correlations found (as in this case between loneliness and mental illness) only shows a link between two independent observables. How one can exclude that loneliness is just coming from a gradual loss of mental fitness, and this can be a very early step of dementia. So it might equally be that the pathogenesis of dementia includes as one of the earliest symptoms loneliness.

I hope, of course, that neither you nor me and any of your friends and your family has to worry about this. It is really a very frustrating disease, since absolutely no working therapies against it (just some to reduce the symptoms).

Take Care , my Dear

Michael

The Green Wave

Dear Michael,

How is life in Munich. Have you been to the movies recently ? You said you wanted to see “No-one knows about persian cats”, the movie about the rock-band in Teheran. We got it here from a friend of Shava in DVD. Its not exactly my most favorite style of music (a bid to rough and fast), but I like how the kids were fighting for their dreams, and was so funny that they not only had to struggle with the official politics that tried everything to block their music for its flavour of freedom and creativity. But in addition, they also had difficulties to be accepted by their parents, who found both the music and the way their kids dressed up very weird and dangerous. I liked this a lot, because this situation I know myself very well.

I want to ask you for something, maybe you can help. I read in a iranian news blog about a very impressive movie about the 2009 students protest (“The green wave” by Ali Samadi Ahadi). The movie was produced in Germany, and is planned to come to the cinema only in spring this year. But I googled and saw that the german TV channel “Phoenix” is going to show it already on the 11th of January, i.e tomorrow. Do you have a possibility to record the program ? This would be great. If you cannot record it, at least you may try to watch it and tell me what it is about.

I hope you are doing well,
taek care
/ghazal

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Hi Ghazal, my Dear,

It was nice reading you e-mail and hearing that you are well up. What a nice co-incidence, that you”ve got something that I was looking for since month (the movie “No one knows about Persian Cats”) and I will soon have something to give you in exchange (the record of the movie “the green wave”). It indeed will be shown on Phoenix TV tonight, and I set everything up to store it on hard-disk. Thanks a lot for this information, I probably would have missed it otherwise.

Have you started your PhD project already ? I guess you are quite bussy, this is normal at the very beginning.

Take Care, Michael

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Dear Ghazal,

The recording of the movie was successful. “The green wave” (german title is “Wo ist meine Stimme” aka “where is my vote”) is amazing, it is a realy artwork. It is mainly a record of the political protest during summer 2009 and the violent reactions of the police.

The Green Wave

The scences are drawn like a cartoon movie, starting with vivid colours showing the peaceful student protests and their battle for a free iran. With the rising violent reactions of the police and security forces, their brutality against unarmed protesters and torture of the imprissoned students, the coulours of the movie turn more and more into a dark grey. These diary-like cartoons are supplemented with comments by Shirin Ebadi, Mohsen Kadivar and Mehdi Mohsen.
One of them said with a lot of frustration, that the people in the west are only concerned about the iranian nuclear activities, but did not care about the situation of the people in Iran. This might be true if you listen to the politicians in the west. But I can assure you that many of the educated and intellectual germans (and I guess europeans in general) follow the heroic fight of the people in Iran with great sympathy. When I saw the movie yesterday, a lot of memories came back to my mind of the political fights we had in 1989 and before, to tear down the iron-coutain in germany and to end the unjustice of the ruling political system, where a single party leaded by a handful of senile men decided about the life of 17 millions. I would say the situation was not easier, in the sense that their were only very few people brave enough to openly show their protest, much less then in Teheran. These were small groups, and when the security police came with one truck, then every single protester was guided away by two of the police men. Even among the students the number of those who decided to speak out loudely their disgrace and go out on the streets was absolutely neglectable, if I compare it to what we saw 2009 in Teheran. The pictures with tens or hundreds of thousand people walking on the streets of Berlin or Leipzig and demanding freedom were only seen after the political system already lost its omni-power. The more I admire the courage of the people in Iran, not to accept the unjustice and the lies of their gouvernment. I think hardly any other nation in the world deserves more freedom and justice than iran, since they have such an intellectual and cultural tradition.

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