strung 80 bulbs on a New York City tree on Dec. The tradition of electric Christmas lights was started when the Edison Electric Light Co. (7) When Christmas became electrified: The holiday season is synonymous with bright, colorful lights. (6) Tears of joy for Iran's women handball team: In their first world-championship appearance, with no funding or other support from Iranian authorities and no coverage on Iran's state TV, Iranian women lost big-time (9-41) to world and Olympics champion Norway, but their goalie was chosen as Player of the Match. (5) Ceremony honoring Pari Zangeneh: Women singers have been sidelined and are still banned by the Iranian regime, so what good comes from such ceremonies? 6, 2010: Instructing women that it is a sin to smell good outside their home. 6, 2012: Aldous Huxley, on feeling direct intuition of beauty and significance. 6, 2015: Iranian Women Writing Transnationally (UCLA roundtable). Persian music: A diverse group of people, inside and outside Iran, lip-sync to a humorous song.
Persian music: Rumi Academy members perform "Ey Aasheghaan", based on a poem by Mowlavi/Rumi. A wonderful street performance of the hugely-successful Irish song "You Raise Me Up." On aging: A man has reached middle age when he is warned to slow down by his doctor, instead of the police. Bowers, America's best Christian, explains Franklin Graham & other Bible-and-Jesus-free evangelicals. Rape is never the victim's fault, regardless of what she was wearing or how many drinks she had. Anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in Iran: A review of state narratives since 1979. (4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest. (3) I have to report this, although I am somewhat skeptical about its significance: Living robots, built from the stem cells of African clawed frog can reproduce, taking us a step closer to self-replicating robots. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations." ~ Aldous Huxley, British author (1894-1963)
Man is impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. (2) Quote of the day: "It is man's intelligence that makes him so often behave more stupidly than the beasts. Apparently, ancient Romans didn't care much about privacy when going to the bathroom: The rich had their private bathrooms, of course, and they built these public units for the masses, not out of caring, but because they did not want to walk knee-deep in human poop! Family photo posted by a US congressman: Nothing says Christmas cheer more than assault rifles! (1) Images of the day: Persian poetry: A couple of verses on aging, from Azeri poet Mohammad-Hossein Shahriar (calligraphic rendering by Javad Yousefi). Lately, non-book items (such as political news, tech news, puzzles, oddities, trivia, humor, art, and music) have formed the vast majority of the entries.Įntries in each section appear in reverse chronological order.Īrchived blogs up to 2011 Blog Entries for 2021Ħ (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet. Given that the book introductions and reviews constituted a form of personal blog, I decided to title this page "Blog & Books," to also allow discussion of interesting topics unrelated to books from time to time. The rapid expansion of the list of books warranted devoting a separate page to it. This page was created in 2009 as an outgrowth of the section entitled "Books Read or Heard" in my personal page.