2009

Dear Friends, I’ve been informed that my commentary on California IOUs will be on Weekend Edition Sunday (July 12)! It will be available on any of these stations (and their Internet streams). New York – 8 to 10 am Eastern – WNYC – 820 AM – www.wnyc.org Washington, DC – 8 to 10 am Eastern – WAMU – 88.5 FM – www.wamu.org Los Angeles – 5 to 10 am Pacific – KPCC – 89.3 FM – www.kpcc.opg Boston – 8…

About a month ago, I received a comment on my blog from Fred Sandsmark, a bandmate of mine at the Castro Valley Community Band, which is where I normally play clarinet during the school year once a week. Fred wrote, in response to my June 1 blog entry on my latest piece for PRI’s The World: I heard this report while driving (I don’t typically hear The World) and found it really interesting. Listening to it made me wonder about…

I had the honor of speaking on PBS’ new online program, called 5Across. It’s a program hosted and produced by PBS MediaShift’s Mark Glaser. This conversation was taped in San Francisco on July 6, 2009. In a crisis, governments will often curtail freedom of the press, censoring or shutting broadcasts and newspapers. But blocking websites, slowing the Internet or cutting off SMS messaging can be harder to do. Stopping the flow of information online can be a difficult task, as…

خدا با ماست / او را هم فیلتر میکنید؟ God is with us / Are you filtering him too? Geeks Around the Globe Rally to Help Iranians Online By CYRUS FARIVAR in San Francisco | 8 July 2009 [TEHRAN BUREAU] In his converted loft apartment in the semi-sketchy-meets-startup SoMa neighborhood, Austin Heap, 25, spends most of his time in front of his computer — a PC tower that he built himself and hacked to run Mac OS X. Heap didn’t…

AFP: Sat Jul 4, 3:46 pm ET: HELSINKI (AFP) – Finland put an end to Estonia’s 11-year reign and took gold and bronze on Saturday at the annual Wife-Carrying World Championships held in Sonkajaervi, central Finland, organisers said. Taisto Miettinen raced through a 250-metre (273-yard) course with two hurdles and a pool in 62 seconds, carrying Kristiina Haapanen on his back. The winners beat Estonia’s Alar Voogla and Kristi Viltrop by 0.1 seconds. Miettinen has been attending the competition for…

PEN American Center, The New York Review of Books and 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center present: Iran: A Conversation About the Elections, Protest and the Future With Shaul Bakhash, Roger Cohen, Haleh Esfandiari, and Karim Sadjadpour [Note: Karim Sadjadpour is my cousin!] Wednesday, July 15, 2009 New York City—Only one month following the start of Iran’s civilian uprising, PEN American Center joins forces with The New York Review of Books and 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center for New…

Dear Friends, I’ve been informed that my radio piece on Haystack and the Dutch Parliament’s new technological support for Iran is airing today. It will be available on any of these stations (and their Internet streams): NYC – 3 pm Eastern – WNYC – 820 AM – www.wnyc.org Washington, DC – 8 pm Eastern – WAMU – 88.5 FM – www.wamu.org Los Angeles – 12 pm Pacific – KPCC – 89.3 FM – www.kpcc.opg Boston – 4 pm Eastern –…

Dare I say it, “green hat” hacker extraordinaire Austin Heap (See SF Chron a few weeks ago) and a group of domestic and foreign techie folks wanting to help Iran have announced the upcoming release of Haystack. Heap writes on his blog that it’s a “new program to provide unfiltered internet access to the people of Iran. A software package for Windows, Mac and Unix systems, called Haystack, will specifically target the Iranian government’s web filtering mechanisms.” I’ll be reporting…

My old friend and traveling buddy from my Senegal days, Al, writes: Hey Cyrus, Thanks for the Canada Day shout out. Sounds like things are pretty awesome with you, and that you’re up to the old traveling quite a bit. I thought I’d ask if you knew any potential candidates for a tech.-and development position I’m trying to fill. I’m spending the summer working for TechnoServe (poverty alleviation in agro-business, mostly) in Tanzania, where I focus on the cotton sector.…

While at the salsa bar at Cactus with Rebekah today: C: How do you say ‘Here, take this,’ in Persian? R: بفرماید (Befarmaeed.) [Go ahead ; By all means ; Be my guest ; Please, have some] C: Really? R: Really. C: Doesn’t that seem overly formal? R: You’ve been Persian for how long?