Cartoon by Nikahand Kowsar [Persian].

Starting last month, I have been working on a project which I have titled “KiBeKi“, or “What’s up?” in English. The project aims at developing a software robot which would crawl inside the Persian blogosphere in order to generate the connectivity graph of this dynamic place as well as to extract other information.

At this moment, the robot has found 47317 sources, 3408 of which have been completely analyzed and 30866 of which have been determined to be Persian blogs but still await full analysis. During this process, the robot has discovered 2945 email addresses which are used by Persian bloggers. The robot is working right now and is gathering more information by the minute.

It is worth to mention that the robot does not have language recognition skills yet, and thus is only able to spot Persian blogs based on the server they are located on, plus the clues I manually give to it. Therefore, although there are many Persian blogs on blogspot and wordpress, these tentative results mainly include blogs found on Persian-language servers such as blogfa and persianblog.

This graph shows the email services used by Persian bloggers, as found so far by the robot. Clearly, for the group analyzed here, yahoo email is the most favorite service by far. gmail and hotmail follow with gmail being about six times more popular.

This graph shows the servers on which the spotted Persian blogs are located. The graph is titled as showing the “scripts” because there are many on-domain blogs which use wordpress, movable type or even blogger. Clearly, for the blogs analyzed here, blogfa.com is the most favorite service.

I am ready to share this information with any serious researcher in order to carry out a joint research project which would hopefully result in the publication of the generated results and analysis. If you have any interest in the subject, or know of any similar research going on anywhere, please leave a comment or send me an email to kamangirblog@yahoo.ca.

Do you think there is any chance for any professional news source to mistake a photoshopped image for a real one? Well, if it is Press TV, the answer is yes.

To see how the “Nuclear Energy is our Definite Right” on the left was changed to “Iran Loves Jews” on the right, in a satirical “Israel Dismantles; World Problems End” piece, and then found its way to a propaganda piece on Press TV, follow this link. Hat trip Gateway Pundit.

There is something in Benazir Bhutto’s assassination that hurts me. It is not the fact that she was relatively young; it is rather about the way she and many others like her are being killed everyday. What makes me terrified is the popularity this weapon is gaining.

I am a fan of Empire Earth and I love to send B52s over to demolish “enemy” buildings. However, the fact is, even in my little computer game, there are people who are doctors and lawyers and teachers and then there are soldiers. When I send an artillery unit, there is no chance that my enemy might think an ice cream van is approaching. With a suicide bomber, however, the postman blows himself up right at your face. But what does this mean?

With the advance of technology, similar to how the terrorists managed to assemble bombs in the lavatory of a plane, using ingredients smuggled in in water bottles and such, we can easily imagine a world in which you can build a bomb using the gas you pass and a bit of your saliva, given that you have drunk a very specific substance a few hours back. Your sweat can be helpful as well. At the end of the day, if you are a suicide bomber, you only need to stay alive for a few hours.

The fact that human beings are turning into bear-hand killers means that the person standing right besides you can potentially be a killing machine. How can security be defined in such a world? One can be carrying a horrid virus. “Land the plane right here or I will sneeze on your face!”

While there is reason to hate, there is reason to invent genius method to kill people. And about hatred, we are in no shortage of it.

Related: How to Produce Angry Muslims

p.s. This post has been edited. That’s why some of the comments might seem irrelevant.

If I want to describe Milan in three words, I’ll call it the city of graffiti, cigarettes, and warm people.

When I went past the exit doors of Milan’s Malpenso Airport, the first thing that came to my mind was, “Why are we living in the frozen Winnipeg?” The temperature was above zero and there was a thick layer of fog in the air, making this new country look amazingly mysterious. Then, I took the bus to get to the center of the city. On both sides of the autobahn the trees were drowning in the fog, making me seriously think that I really should find a post-doc in Milan. These ideas were what I kept thinking about until I was taken away by a deep sleep.

The next morning, the fog was still there. I thought, “Well, this is early in the morning”. I spent the day in the National Museum and a few historic churches. At 4 pm, the fog started to turn into darkness. The next morning, the fog was back there. Winnipeg is indeed a huge frozen prairie in the winter, but, still, there is a lot of sunshine in there which makes it bearable. At least, if you are in a bus or riding a car, you can enjoy the white landscape every piece of which is shining under the sun. In Milan, in the other hand, there is no -40 but neither is the sunshine, for the most part.

And then, there comes the smoking habit. I have come to the conclusion that at any moment half Milanese are holding a cigarette in their hand. At least half the people whom I see in the street are puffing out smoke. This negated my first impression that the people of Milan are very conscious about their health, as finding an overweight person here is a rarity. I had thought that with all the delicious calorie-rich Italian dishes, these people should be doing something big to get into shape. Then, I was really thinking about adapting some of their habits, unless it is the smoking which is burning the fat.

Nevertheless, Italians seem to be the European version of Iranians; the same ever-present sense of humor, the sudden storm of friendship, and the horrible driving.

By the way, I have discovered that people, including Italians, are willing to pay large amounts of cash for things I cannot even swallow, including cheese which seems to have been rotting for years. This I guess proves the theory that we don’t like food because it is delicious, but that it is in fact the other way around; food is delicious because we like it. This one is especially to all my Iranian friends who hate it, and the non-Iranian friends who have to keep themselves from throwing up, when I say I love sheep-stomach, also known as Sirabi in Persian.

Lisa Goldman may be sentenced to jail for her trip to Lebanon on her Canadian passport (more on her blog).

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Don’t miss it!

I am just back from a long trip to Europe. I had the marvelous opportunity of meeting two good pen-friends of years and I am very happy about it. And also, I attended a fantastic conference about blogging and had the chance to talk to a few other bloggers and activists and experts and this was a real learning process. But then, my souvenir from the trip was a bad flu.

I almost collapsed in Berlin while the Police officer was searching me through, because for some reason my jeans always irritate the metal detectors. At the moment that I was asking him to let me sit for a while I was thinking of tasers. What is a better method for a hijacker, than pretending that he is sick and then pass through the security with a minimal search? The officer was so nice that he brought me a glass of water and gave me a few minutes to recover. Later, while I was waiting for the boarding time, and had just finished my fantastically sweet Cappuccino, I was approached by a paramedic team that wanted to know how I felt. I was indeed impressed. A blood pressure check, a check of sugar level in my blood, and I received some medication which indeed made me feel much better afterwards.

The conference was held by a well-known institution located in Berlin and they had managed to gather a good team, more than half of which were Iranians flown in from around the world. We even managed to not stumble upon the silly politics of the Iranian diaspora for the whole time.

As I had mentioned on my Persian blog, and here as well, that I was going on a trip for a conference, I anticipated some negative reactions. The fact is, for many, “attending a conference” sounds like “getting financially supported by a suspicious foreign group which has a more suspicious plan to suck on Iran’s oil”. This, I would say, is indeed a result of numerous coups, and alike, all carried out by Iranians funded by foreigners against Iranians. Nevertheless, we need to sit together and talk. This is one of the many aspects of the Iranian dilemma.

My only response to this criticism is that I do not have any intention of turning blogging, or activism, into the main element of  my life. Therefore, clearly, I have no intention of abusing this blog as a moneymaking business. I do not necessarily criticize Iranians who are hired by “foreigners”, because I am personally in contract with the research lab for which I work. My profession is Optimization, so I work for a networking lab, a sociologist on the other hand would clearly be supported through a fund which is disbursed by a politically-charged body. Thus, I have no intention of “selling my soul” to anyone, because it is already sold to TRLabs.

Do you remember Makwan Moloudzadeh, who was to be executed for a homosexual act which he allegedly committed when he was 13 (see: Boy to be executed for Underage Homosexual Act, Take Ation!)? He was executed recently despite the controversy surrounding the witnesses against him (Reuters).

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Police Brutality in Birjand, Iran, during the Sharia crackdown. This is what the girl is saying,

Wait a second! Lady Policewoman! … [Screaming] Let me go! [Screaming] People! Help! Help me!…

It is not clear what happens to the girl at the end. The consequences of detention by the Sharia police can be quite dangerous, see: Medical Student Commits Suicide after being Arrested by Sharia Police.

The women’s rights’ activist Jelveh Javaheri (جلوه جواهری) was arrested today by the Revolutionary Courts. She was summoned to the court today and was arrested on charges of disrupting the public opinion, anti-regime propaganda, and spreading false news. Javaheri is a sociology graduate student and has been active in women rights’ groups for a long time. Her activities included writing articles as well as translation of related material.

Javaheri was amongst the activists who were arrested last March after their calm protest was disrupted by the Police (see: Police Violence in Iran against Activist Women). She will join Maryam Hosseinkhah, another activist who has been in the infamous Evin Prison for about two weeks now (see: Activist Woman Arrested) [Persian].