Kamangir (Archer)

Bush, Chirac, and Ahmadinejad in the Hell

Kamangir | February 28, 2007 | Category Iran

Bush, Chirac, and Ahmadinejad die and arrive in hell. The devil sees their faces and asks, “why are you so depressed?” Bush says “I left USA so fast, I did not have time to kiss my family good bye, I wish I could call the States.” The devil gives him a phone, Bush calls home, talks with his family, gives a couple of instructions to Condi Rice… When he’s finished, the devil asks for 2 million USD, Bush says “What? 2 million bucks? I only spoke for 10 minutes. That’s insane!” The devil answers, “but you are in hell man, that’s some distance call!”

Chirac then tells the devil, “if Bush could call the USA, I want to call France!” And so he does too. When he is finished, devil asks for 3 million Euros. Chirac is shocked: “What? 3 million Euros for 15 minutes talk?”, “well you call from hell…” answers the devil.

Finally, Ahmadinejad asks for the telephone to call Iran. He starts to speak and speak and speak for 5 hours on nuclear energy. When he is finished, he asks, “how much should I pay?” Devil says “5000 Tomans [about 6 USD]“. “Only 5000 Tomans for 5 hours?” asks Ahmadinejad. “Well” says the Devil, “that’s a local call…”

Thanks to ZM.

Cure for Cancer and Asking Allah’s opinion

Kamangir | February 28, 2007 | Category Iran

This is a roundup of what is going on in the Islamic Republic, right now.

Fars had the great news about another “scientific” achievement; “For the first time and thanks to the great efforts of the national experts, the drug which cures Prostate Cancer was produced in Iran”. The report follows, “the head of the drug company Eight [implicitly referring to the eighth Imam] announced the production of the cure for Prostate Cancer, with the scientific name ‘Buserelin‘, for the first time in Iran”. If, like me, you think he is referring to a new discovery, I am afraid you are wrong. The head of the company describes that the drug was formerly imported form France but now that “its production line is installed in Iran” (by whom?), the drug will be sold for one-third of the original price. He adds that the drug also works for infertility.

Reportedly, a deputy to the former IR minister of defence has been disappeared in Turkey. He has had an important role in secret activities of the IR and no one has seen him in twenty days.

Finally, the big news is Ahmadinejad’s trip to Sudan. He flattered Omar-Al-Bashir by saying “the Islamic Republic of Iran finds the development and prosperity of Sudan as its own development and prosperity”. Ahmadinejad has completely learned how to find friends in strange places. I remind you that Darfur happens to be located in Sudan. Also, the IR offered to help Sudan with their nuclear program and Khamenei wished Al-BAshir success with “the problem in western Sudan”.

Before leaving Iran, right in front of the staircase, Ahmadinejad referred to Quran to ask for Allah’s opinion (called Istakhara). As much as I have learned in the ideology classes, to do Istakhara, you think about what you are going to do and then open the Quran. Based on the meaning of what comes out, you decide whether or not to do what you were were going to do. Thus, there is a 50% chance that after Istakhara you would change your mind. Hence, I assume Ahmadinejad, and the pals in Sudan, were quite ready for Allah to order them to forget the trip. I’m wondering if they always do the Istakhara, and if they take it really seriously. Because, I have never heard an official trip being canceled due to an Istakhara.

Ahmadinejad started with the image shown in the above and continued like this:

How To Move a Blog

Kamangir | February 28, 2007 | Category Iran

The experience of moving Kamangir from its Wordpress location to the new one was very exciting and also fascinatingly informative, especially because I know totally nothing about the huge three-word names which seem to relate to crazy stuff in the internet.

First, I should thank the guys in Wordpress for their fantastic work. I have had the experience of moving out from blogger, and it was awful. At the end, I had to use the Wordpress utility which literally steals your posts form blogger. Moving from Wordpress (to wordpress) was just fantastic; export and import. Though, I had to make my hands dirty, only a bit, with the php stuff. I also wish to thank the guy in Blue Host who answered my frequent calls, and it was 4 in the morning (They are not going to give me any discount for this advertisement. I wish they did). Also thanks to Esra’a, Nami, and other friends who answered my emails. Also, thanks to Matthew who became anxious when the new blogger was acting strangely.

Then, the greed came. I thought, why not upload all images in my own host? Knowing that Imageshack it filtered in Iran made more eager to do that. So, I searched the web for a command line downloader, and I found this. Then, the problem was to write down a code which could read the Wordpress exported WXR (is that the actual name of it?) and download all the images and also to correct the links in the WXR.

Strangely enough, I guess, I decided to use MATLAB for this purpose. For those of you who are curious, MATLAB is a mathematical programming language designed for proof-of-concept sort of projects. I thought, I had been seriously using MATLAB for about four years now, for stuff like image processing and optimization, so why not use it for this problem. I did and it (source) worked fantastically well. In fact, what you are looking at now (if you are using the new address/feed), is the product of my tiny MATLAB code. So, thanks to MathWorks.