cyrusfarivar.com

Hey guys, in addition to my intermittent blogging here, I’ll be taking the wheel at Salon’s The Machinist blog this week, from August 18th through the 22nd.

I’ll be following the footsteps of guest writers Evan Ratliff, Denise Caruso, Joe Hutsko, and the original Machinist himself, Farhad Manjoo.

Come stop by and say hi!

Update: My first post is here.

Big ups to Evgeny Morozov for penning this oft-lauded piece for Slate, “An Army of Ones and Zeroes: How I became a soldier in the Georgia-Russia cyberwar.” (Not to toot my own horn, but I played a small role in this piece, in that Evgeny asked me who to contact at Slate for the piece, and he took care of the rest.)

He writes:

I had a much simpler research objective: to test how much damage someone like me, who is quite aloof from the Kremlin physically and politically, could inflict upon Georgia’s Web infrastructure, acting entirely on my own and using only a laptop and an Internet connection. If I succeeded, that would somewhat contradict the widely shared assumption—at least in most of the Western media—that the Kremlin is managing this cyberwarfare in a centralized fashion. My mission, if successful, would show that the field is open to anyone with a grudge against Georgia, regardless of their exact relationship with state authorities.

Of course, the fact that Estonia is providing technical expertise and web hosting to Georgia after having gone through similar attacks last year by legions of anonymous Russian hackers definitely piques my interest.

With the good weather lately, feeling all crunchy and wanting to save gas and all that I’ve been riding my bike a bit more. For far too long, I’ve been been too paranoid about not having my bike stolen (I got a bike stolen in high school and another in college) and so I’m ashamed to admit that my bike has spent more time in my shed, rather than on the road.

But I’ve been totally loving hitting the streets again to do errands — I’ve biked a few times now from my house in North Oakland to the North Berkeley library. My gears are a little rusty, and I’m sure that I look a bit strange given that my riding kit is an American-flag emblazoned helmet, Rudy Project cycling glasses, bike gloves, and a pair of Birkenstocks.

Plus, in research for a piece that I’m doing that relates to bikes, I came across this piece from Salon:

Surprisingly, finding room wasn’t a problem. Xtracycle says the FreeRadical is designed to haul 200 pounds of cargo. I was well over that but decided to go for it. I fit four full bags into the expandable vinyl sacks. I figured out how to cinch the straps around the backs to prevent my food from becoming roadkill. But I could feel the weight just lifting those bags onto the bike. Damn liquids.

When I hit the road, pedaling wasn’t a problem. Most mountain bikes have a “granny gear” for this kind of work. Under the extreme weight, the bike frame felt wobbly, causing me to weave a bit. Luckily my route was almost completely on a bike path, rather than the street. I took it slow and easy and soon found myself cruising up my own sidewalk.

Next I wondered how it would feel with my kids on board. Once a week, I take the kids to the local farmers market. My son is about to turn 3. My daughter is almost 7. Combined, they weigh maybe 70 pounds. To make them comfortable, I bought two wooden FreeRadical footrests called “Footsies” from Xtracycle for my daughter. For my son’s short legs, I bolted a piece of wood on the back of the bike frame for his feet. For a handlebar, I put some bike grips on a $5 piece of pipe and fastened it to the back of my bike seat.

and this, from the WSJ:

The policy goal is to have bicycle trips replace many short car trips, which account for 6% of total emissions from cars, according to a document adopted last month by the European Economic and Social Committee, an organization of transportation ministers from EU member countries. Another report published this year by the Dutch Cyclists’ Association found that if all trips shorter than 7.5 kilometers in the Netherlands currently made by car were by bicycle, the country would reduce its carbon-dioxide emissions by 2.4 million tons. That’s about one-eighth of the amount of emissions it would need to reduce to meet the Kyoto Protocol.

Officials from some American cities have made pilgrimages to Amsterdam. But in the U.S., bike commuters face more challenges, including strong opposition from some small businesses, car owners and parking-garage owners to any proposals to remove parking, shrink driving lanes or reduce speed limits. Some argue that limiting car usage would hurt business. “We haven’t made the tough decisions yet,” says Sam Adams, city commissioner of Portland, Ore., who visited Amsterdam in 2005. There has been some movement. Last month, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a proposal to add a congestion charge on cars and increase the number of bicycle paths in the city. It would also require commercial buildings to have indoor parking facilities for bikes.

Wow, apparently a UCSD political science professor, James H. Fowler, has just published a bona fide research paper on the effects of the “Colbert Bump.”

From the press release:

His analysis finds that Democrats who appear on The Colbert Report enjoy a significant increase in the number and total amount of donations they receive over the next 30?? days when compared to similar candidates who do not appear on the show. Specifically, Democrats who come on the program raise $8,247 more than colleagues who don’t do so on the 32nd day following their appearance—”a bump of roughly two-fifths over the normal rate of receipts.” Republicans do not appear to benefit at all from appearing on the program; notably, they raise more funds in the month before coming on the program while actually raising less money in the month following their appearance—hinting at a possible “Colbert bust” for the GOP instead.

Update: Apparently NPR’s Day to Day interviewed this guy back in April.

Dear Friends,

I’ve been informed that my radio piece on the cyberattacks against Georgian websites will be on Morning Edition tomorrow (August 12).

It will be available on any of these stations (and their Internet streams).

New York - 5 am to 9 am Eastern - WNYC - 820 AM - www.wnyc.org
Washington, DC - 5 am to 10 am Eastern - WAMU - 88.5 FM - www.wamu.org
Los Angeles - 2 am to 9 am Pacific - KPCC - 89.3 FM - www.kpcc.opg
Boston - 6 am to 9 am Eastern - WGBH - 89.7 FM - www.wgbh.org
San Francisco - 3 am to 9 am Pacific - KQED - 88.5 FM - www.kqed.org

It will also be archived at npr.org and at my site if you miss it.

Lemme know if you hear it!

Update: Audio is here!

These are the headlines that I’ve been reading this afternoon:

The New York Times: On Slog to Safety, Seething at West

One soldier, his face a mask of exhaustion, cradled a Kalashnikov.

“We killed as many of them as we could,” he said. “But where are our friends?”

It was the question of the day. As Russian forces massed Sunday on two fronts, Georgians were heading south with whatever they could carry. When they met Western journalists, they all said the same thing: Where is the United States? When is NATO coming?

Since the conflict began, Western leaders have worked frantically to broker a cease-fire. But for Georgians — so boisterously pro-American that Tbilisi, the capital, has a George W. Bush Street — diplomacy fell far short of what they expected.

BBC: Georgia move fails to halt raids

The Washington Post: Georgian Web Sites Under Attack

AP: Russia expands Georgia blitz, deploys ships

The New York Times: Russians Push Past Separatist Area to Assault Central Georgia

The Wall Street Journal: Russia Widens Attacks on Georgia

Le Monde: Le conflit en Ossétie du Sud, jour par jour [Also, check this sweet map]

Global Voices: South Ossetia Crisis 2008

Becky and I are moving to Lyon next month. I leave Oakland in exactly six weeks (OMG! SIX WEEKS!) for a weekend trip to DC to visit my cousins and will go to France from there on September 21.

So, who’s got leads on apartments in Lyon?

We want something in the 3è (near Part-Dieu), have 500 euros max to spend and ideally would like the place to be furnished. We’d need it from October 1 2008 to May 1 2009. Contact me immediately if you can help.

Merci d’avance!

The subject of traffic tickets is on my mind lately, as a few months ago I got busted for doing a California roll right turn here in North Oakland. I’m in the midst of online traffic school right now, and when all is said and done, I’ll have had to throw down $400 for the pleasure.

Compare that to Alex’s experience in Estonia:

Then came (compared the the States) a lot of paperwork. A document showing my rights under Estonian law (form was in Estonian, English & Russian by the way) which I was to sign that I read and understood. Then he informed me of my options regarding the ticket, the easiest being that he could issue it on the spot (but I could dispute it and go to court, etc). I chose just to take the ticket right then because I knew that in Estonia a ticket doesn’t affect your insurance rate. It’s simply a fee to pay with no long term repercussions so to speak (unless you rack up tickets weekly I suppose.) In the States for example a traffic violation can greatly increase your car insurance rates or in some cases make it almost impossible to obtain car insurance.

Before writing out the ticket there was another document showing that he calibrated his radar gun that morning and that his vehicle was not moving when he took the speed reading. He also filled in some boxes showing it was a clear day with dry roads and that I was otherwise driving properly. The strangest bit was at the end of that form I had to write in the explanation box why I was speeding. I just jotted down that I wasn’t paying attention to the speed limit at the time and he was satisfied with that. Then I signed and dated.

Finally he got to the ticket and said that while the maximum fine could be 3000 EEK ($295), he didn’t find in my case this was necessary and wrote the ticket for 900 EEK ($88). Not too bad I thought so I happily signed on the dotted line. Like everything else in Estonia, payment could be made online through my bank simply referencing my ticket number which I did that evening when I got home. Couldn’t have been any easier.

Tim Wu’s Op-Ed in The New York Times:

Wired connections to the home — cable and telephone lines — are the major way that Americans move information. In the United States and in most of the world, a monopoly or duopoly controls the pipes that supply homes with information. These companies, primarily phone and cable companies, have a natural interest in controlling supply to maintain price levels and extract maximum profit from their investments — similar to how OPEC sets production quotas to guarantee high prices.

But just as with oil, there are alternatives. Amsterdam and some cities in Utah have deployed their own fiber to carry bandwidth as a public utility. A future possibility is to buy your own fiber, the way you might buy a solar panel for your home.

Encouraging competition is another path, though not an easy one: most of the much-hyped competitors from earlier this decade, like businesses that would provide broadband Internet over power lines, are dead or moribund. But alternatives are important. Relying on monopoly producers for the transmission of information is a dangerous path.

Dear Friends,

I’ve been informed that my radio piece on Apple’s woes with the iPhone and MobileMe will be on All Things Considered today (July 30)!

It will be available on any of these stations (and their Internet streams).

New York - 4 pm to 6:30 pm Eastern - WNYC - 820 AM - www.wnyc.org
Washington, DC - 4 pm to 6 pm Eastern - WAMU - 88.5 FM - www.wamu.org
Los Angeles - 3:30 pm to 6:30 pm Pacific - KPCC - 89.3 FM - www.kpcc.opg
Boston - 5 pm to 7 pm Eastern - WGBH - 89.7 FM - www.wgbh.org
San Francisco - 4:30 pm to 6:30 pm Pacific - KQED - 88.5 FM - www.kqed.org

It will also be archived at npr.org and here if you miss it.

Update: Audio is here!

Lemme know if you hear it!

I spent all day Friday watching the 13th day of the Sumo Grand Tournament in Nagoya. It was pretty sweet. More to come soon, but for now, here’s a little taste:

Crazy conservatives getting their panties in a twist about the State Department’s “Mosques of America” calendar.

Also, this writer Jeff Johnson seems to be jealous over the fact that he didn’t come with Stuff White People Like. Get over it, dude.

There’s a patron saint for the Internet? Meet Saint Isidore of Seville.

The Star Pheonix: ‘Couch surfing’ site reveals cultural side of the Internet

Big ups to my cousin Karim Sadjadpour for his latest interview in FP:

Foreign Policy: Last week, Iran sounded conciliatory notes when Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki hailed a “new trend” in negotiations with the West over the nuclear issue. But this week, Iranian officials vowed to strike back against any U.S. or Israeli attack and test-fired missiles that they claim can hit Tel Aviv. What explains this shift in tone?

Karim Sadjadpour: The last two weeks have been very representative of the worldview of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his modus operandi of neither confrontation nor accommodation with the West. Last week, we saw conciliatory signals from Tehran, saying: “We’re capable of being diplomatic.” And this week, Iran was sending signals to the Israelis and Americans saying, “If you want to escalate, we have the means to reciprocate.” Khamenei wants to send a clear signal: “Don’t think that pressure is going to moderate our behavior,” because he has always believed that if you give in to pressure, you only invite more of it.

I’m going to visit my brother in Tokyo this week. See y’allz on the flip!

Any recs for the Land of the Rising Sun? Email me!