How to manage your graduate studying

It is very important to have concerns on how the essential parts of a graduate program you are doing go on.

Here are some interesting links from an interesting website that I just found it :


Science survival blog

http://www.sciencesurvivalblog.com/

Alevism and Baktashis Traditions

Alevism is a number of sufi orders with close common shares with Twelver Shia Islam. The most important order of Alevis are Baktashi order (Baktashiyeh). One of the old orders where safavism which is also know as Kizilbash orders that they found the united Iran (Persia) after 9 houndred years and the essental political and religious bases of the present Iran can be rooted to Safavid and the kizilbash movement.

The baktashis are less known in Iran and after decline of ottoman they moved their headquarter from east Anatolia to Tirana in Albania. However their traditional music is still strongly found in East Turkey and it is a major component of mystic ( from sufism) traditional music of the middle east.

Here I put some link on the founder of Baktashiyeh Hajj Baktahs Wali who was originally from khorasan and he moved exactly during the same period as Rumi (Balkhi)'s family to minor asia and for the same reason (Mongol catastrophic Invasion of Persia).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajji_Bektash_Wali

Also a typical alevi baktahsi music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frPg2ugRdq0

Bedbug

Bedbug is becoming a nightmare in big cities in North America. The growth rate of this insect has been increased in five times during past few years. The biggest source of infection is first luggage and suitcases coming back home after travel and second is the used furniture.

Some recommendations to avoid the infection is:

1) Washing the cloth in the suitcase immediately after arrival at home in the hottest possible water and drying for at least 20 minutes.

2) Vacuuming out the suitcases

3) Isolating the suitcases after arrival and before vacuumin out and washing the cloths

4) Being concerned on purchasing used furniture and avoid used matresses at all costs.

A discussion on the necessity of oriental studies with a local view

I just found a very interesting lecture on some issues related to the relation of modern science and traditions by a world well-known traditionalist , Prof. Seyyed Hossein Nasr. He believes that understanding eastern issues through solely western views is not appropriate as we conclude about our inside through a mirror picture, which is in some cases are the old picrure and it is not correctly updated. He gives examples of how the Greek knowledge introduced to Middle easterns during the Islamic Golden Age and how they made everything local.

Here is the link, which is a lecture given at MIT some time ago :

http://web.mit.edu/mitmsa/www/NewSite/libstuff/nasr/nasrspeech1.html

More details on the biography of Prof. Nasr as a predominant Iranian philosopher and an international icon in Islamic studies can be found at:

http://www.nasrfoundation.org/bios.html

Re-examining of Mongol invasion of Iran

I found an interesting link by a famous Iranian mathematician who tries to model the decline of the Persian culture after Mongol invasion. He is Prof. Abbas Edalat from Imperial College , UK. He will give his presentation at IPM (Institute for studies in theoretical physics and mathematics) in Tehran, Iran. Here is an abstract of this presentation, which gives some idea. I found it interesting although, modelling social phenomena with only mathematical tools can be inadequate in many cases :

http://www.ipm.ac.ir/edalat2.pdf

Roman-Persian wars

Roman-Persian wars took about 700 years and it affects the middle east region. Both sides were not able to gain decisive victory so in long time their boarders were unchanged. The last Roman-Persian war started in 602 AD and took 26 years until 628 AD. The rapid Persian gains and Preaching to the greatest extent of the Persian empire was responded by progressive victories of Romans and pushing back Persians to their lands and following them to their capital Ctesphone. The final stage of this war showed that the Persian Sasanid armywas no longer able to concentrate and resist and was loosing its competence. This was finally approved during the Islamic conquest of Iran where Persian outnumbered army was not able to fight against moslem arab light cavalaries and they lost a big territory in Iraq only 9 months with a catastrophic loss of soldiers and heavy cavalaries.

Here is a link on Roman-Persian wars:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman-Persian_Wars

Who is the logo designer of Iran Air (Homa)

Only a tiny percents of experts in Graphics in Iran know who the logo designer of Iran Air is. A documentation on the history of graphics by M. Momayyez also indicates a wrong history of the logo of the flag carrier of Iran. Here is an interview with the logo designer:

http://www.rasm.ir/default.asp?Aid=2200

Biofuels bad or good

I just found a very interesting Q & A website on Biofuels. This shows some bad aspects of the production of biofuels and the efficiency of such fuels. This website is developed by Prof. Tad Patzek from UC Berkeley (currently the chairman at the department of petroleum engineering at U of Texas at Austin; number one petroleum school in the United States).

I have seen more evidences on inefficiency of the production and use of biofuels. I believe the solution is still responsibly use of fossil fuels:

Here are the links:

http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/patzek/BiofuelQA/Materials/QAarchive2007.htm

http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/patzek/BiofuelQA/qatop.htm

Ibn Khaldun - The father of the philosophy of history

Abdurahman Ibn Khaldun is one of the last scholars of the Golden Islamic Age and certainly the last in the North Africa and Andalus region before the end of the Islamic Golden age in the fourteenth century. He was born in 1332 AD in Tunisia from an Andalusian family from Sevile which was forced to migrate from Sevile after Reconquista in Spain. He studied in Fez ( a famous school in North africa during medivals) and lived in Tunisia for a long time and finally moved to Cairo in Egypt and died in 1406 AD. He lived in a critical period of the Middle east and north africa history when the Mongol invasion destroyed Persia and Baghdad and the islamic intelectualism was declining as a result of the cultural deterioration by the destructive Mongol invasions. This deterioration was accelerated by the invasion of Timurlane (Teimur ). At the same time the Reconquista in Spain and Portugal was completed and most of Andalus (Spain) except the Kingdam of Granada was captured by the christian kingdom of castile ( They re-took Spain and established Spian in the present cultural atmosphere).

The situation led him to think more deeply on the historical events and the reason that a culture decline. His methodology is completely extraordinary during his life and is completel close to the methodology of some europian philosophers and thinkers in 18th and 19th century including Hagel. His work " Introduction = Al Mudaddimah " is a master peice in the old sociology and the philosophy of history, politics and economics. He used the dynasties in North Africa and Middle east as samples and categorized the reasons that a cultural rises and declines. His book has a review on different ancient cultures including persians.

Another work is the book Assabiayah = " ties". He invistagte the history of moor and arab tribes in North Africa and try to conclude the factors in their political deterioration and try to model the similar cultures in the world at his time.

It sounds interesting to manetion a small part of his book " Introduction" on Persians as he extensvely admired the Persian culture and he name some facts that the Prsian cultural at his time was declining ( For a while the scholar centre of the Islamic world was moved from the east Islamic territory including Persia and Baghdad to the west such as Cairo and Tunisia and Morocco"

" On Persians :

"It is a remarkable fact that, with few exceptions, most Muslim scholars both in the religious and intellectual sciences have been non-Arabs."

"Hadith of Persians and belief":

"Thus the founders of grammar were Sibawaih and after him, al-Farisi and Az-Zajjaj. All of them were of Persian descent…they invented rules of (Arabic) grammar…great jurists were Persians… only the Persians engaged in the task of preserving knowledge and writing systematic scholarly works. Thus the truth of the statement of the prophet becomes apparent, "If learning were suspended in the highest parts of heaven the Persians would attain it"…The intellectual sciences were also the preserve of the Persians, left alone by the Arabs, who did not cultivate them…as was the case with all crafts…This situation continued in the cities as long as the Persians and Persian countries, Iraq, Khorasan and Transoxiana, retained their sedentary culture."

Here are some links on Ibn Khaldun :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Khaldun

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muqaddimah

Proverb

An old proverb from Gilan :

" bacheh taa vaghti ke beresseh be piri , momkeneh rang e cheshmaash ham aabi besheh"

It means " A person while getting old can experience that much strange and non sence thing from around and the life can be so harsh and full of difficulties to even change the person's eye color"
This is true everybody behaves different over the life and you sometime miss to recognize persond you were thinking that you knew them completely.

Site seeing in Quebec

A link on site seeing in Quebec :

http://www.bonjourquebec.com/

Somalia pirates out of control !

Here is an article on Somalia pirates in Herald Tribune. The just attacked to an Iranian vessel in the Red Sea. They are out of control !

The link :

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/13/business/pirates.php

Airline Safety Tips

Airtrips are always the safest way of travel. Only 36 airlines in North America do not have any fatal acciedent over past 38 years (since 1970). The same thing is in Europe. Even in Iran , the airplane is still the safest mean to travel.

I found some interesting links on this issue. The website www.airsafe.com is the most accredited website on the air safety issues.

I just chose the 10 Airline safety tips to reduce the chance of fatal accedient statitically :

http://www.airsafe.com/ten_tips.htm

Airlines without any fatal accident in their history in the middle east : ( Mahan Air from iran is also on the list)
http://www.airsafe.com/events/regions/af_nofat.htm

And finally a list of airlines not to be taken for an airtrip :

http://www.frommers.com/tips/health_and_travel_insurance/article.cfm?tipID=HEALTH&articleid=5138&t=Travel%20Health%20%26amp%3B%20Safety%3A%20Safest%20Airlines%20%26amp%3B%20Planes

Mongol Invasion of Persia - 1

Mongols invaded central asia and north east of Iran in 1218 A.D. (617 Hejri). The first invasion took about 5 years ( rdered by Ghenghiz khan) . A number of battles took place and Khawarazmids lost all except one in Parwan (presently loacted in north east Afghanistan ). Mongols sacked all cities in central asia and destroyed any thing there including Samarkand, Bukhara, Khawarazm (presently Urgench), Herat, Merv and Neishabour. In this period as a result of famine and massacre the population of Persia droped from 2.5 millions to one tenth (250000). There are only a few regions in modern Iran , which was not suffered from the first Mongol invasion including Tabriz in Northwest and Shiraz in south.

The second wave of invasion started from 1257 A.D. by Hulegu. They did a massacre in Iraq and west Iran (in one case 800000 in aghdad and neighboring regions) and destroyed the ancient irrigation system of south Iraq. The massacre was such terrible that no sufficient population could be found to repair the irrigation system. Some of the lakes and small khours as a esult of the destruction of the ancient irrigation system and agriculture in south Iraq have been remained from that period untouched.

They kept invading until 1259 when a coalition from Egypt composed of Turkic soldierd raised from childhood and trained in Egypt as soldiers amd cavaliers (Mamaalik; from the word al-mamluk; slaves) in addition to the local people of Palestine defeated Mongols in Ain Jalut (Plaestine). This moment is the end of the Mongolian progressive invasion to Middle east and West Asia. This moment was very important in old islamic days and still in some countries including Egypt is highlighted in the religious Calenders (The day is in 17th of Ramadan) with some celebrations.

You can find a timeline of Mongol conquests on :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasions

List of Iranian medlaists in Olympic (1948-2008)

You can find the list of medalists in past 60 years (since the first olympic attendance in 1948) upto date (August 20, 2008).


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_at_the_Olympics

A super computer for U of T

Here is the link on the most energy efficient supper computer in the world, which will be operated at U of T .

http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2008/08/14/utoronto-scores-worlds-most-energy-efficient-supercomputer/

The IUPAP young scientis prize

Dr. Yasaman Farzan won IUPAP young scientis prize. She is a young and active physists , currently a faculty member of the Institute for studies in Physics and Mathematics (IPM), Tehran, Iran.

She was a Physics Olympiad winner during her high school. She graduated with a PhD from Italy and the States and she was back to teach and work in Iran. Here is her homepage:

http://physics.ipm.ac.ir/people/farzan/

and you can find more on the prize she wins:


http://www.interactions.org/cms/?pid=1026217

Palestine mourns his national poet

Mahmoud Darwish was a hero in Palestine and a well known poet in modern arabic literature passed away. He was grown up in Aka and exiled to Jordan, France and USA for his political activities as a member of PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization). He is an icon for Palestinian people and his works have been regularly narrowed all around the world. His first work and the most famous one is the wingless bird " Asafir bila ajniha" and the famous identity card is among his first works in this book.

His funeral ceremony was held in West bank and many officials attended. He passed away in 67 in the United States.

Here is a link :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Darwish

Some facts on Georgia (country)

You can find some nteresting facts on Georgia and South Ossetia. Many attentions have been paid on Georgia and the sudden war to Russia:


South Ossetia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_ossetia


Georgia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_(country)


A famous singer from Georgia : Sopo (Sopho) Khalvashi

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E97ZfemlQfQ

An article on the daily power cut in Iran

Here is a link on an article regarding the daily power cut and impacts given by Financial Times:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/04c2d95c-66fe-11dd-808f-0000779fd18c.html


P.S. You can always find related articles to Iran on www.ft.com . The Middle East Section

Slavery in the old traditional way !!!

It might be shocking to know that some tribes in the north and centre of Mauritania still attack to the originally african people of south and they capture them and use them as their slaves. This is banned by the official authorities however, it is impossible to prevent slavery according to the nature of the country constituting of different tribes which only obey their local heads.

Here is a link on Mauritania and its demographic distribution :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauritania

Artificial Mountain!

The UAE is not a mountianeous country. It covers by flats and deserts. There is a competetion to design some artificial mountains to add more touristique attractions. Everybody who wants to try the creativity can participate in the following competition :

http://www.manmm.net/

The First Encyclopedia in Iran

The First Encyclopedia in Iran is Mossahab encyclopedia:

Here are some interesting readings I found on Mossahab encyclopedia:

Who was Dr. Mossahab:
http://jazirehdanesh.com/find.php?a=14.202.411.fa

How Mossahab encyclopedia was prepared :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/arts/story/2008/08/080805_an-cy-sanaati-masaheb.shtml

Asian cheetah

Iran is the last habitat of Asian cheetahs. They used to live in a vast region from Saudi Arabia to India. However, they have been formally called as an extinct spices in all the region except center, east and southeast of Iran (Semnan, Yazd, Bafgh and most probably in Baluchistan). The number of remaining cheetahs ( locally called Youz or Youz-Palang) is estimated to be less than 60. This issue is not only a national concern but also an international one as a rare type of cheetah (leopard) is being extinct without any replacement.

Recently a joint group of Iranian-American researchers started exploring all opportunities to save remaining asian cheetahs in Iran. They use sophisticated pointing tools to detect the remaining cheetahs and establish a rigorous protection plan. It might be interesting to know that the only exception of the US sanctions on exporting sensitive radio and radar equipments is for these pointing tools. The case was too vital to be considered as a political issue influencing by the present US-Iran conflicts.

Here are some additional links on the asian cheetahs, Iranian-American joint research group and other protective measurements on this issue:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/iran/story/2008/08/080805_wmj--asiatic-cheetah.shtml

http://www.iraniancheetah.org/English/EAbout%20Cheetah.htm