Cyrus Farivar

Paul, Fred, my brother Alex, Lane and Sayo went to the Japan vs. US soccer match in San Francisco on Friday night. We also met up with some of Lane’s Japanese friends and had a cross-cultural exchange using the cunning use of flags.

Wired News: by Cyrus Farivar A new service could allow you to share your home internet connection and, in exchange, surf the web for free while on the road. A Spanish company called Fon (pronounced like “phone”) has devised a new way to provide Wi-Fi to local areas. The company announced earlier this week that it was able to obtain nearly $22 million in funding from Silicon Valley juggernauts including Sequoia Capital, Google and Skype. The company plans to provide…

Slate: And that is why as a Muslim American I am enraged by the publication of these cartoons. Not because they offend my prophet or my religion, but because they fly in the face of the tireless efforts of so many civic and religious leaders—both Muslim and non-Muslim—to promote unity and assimilation rather than hatred and discord; because they play into the hands of those who preach extremism; because they are fodder for the clash-of-civilizations mentality that pits East against…

Eston tagged me with this, so here goes. Four jobs I’ve had: 1. Paperboy – The Evening Outlook – Santa Monica, CA 2. Sales Associate – LaCité French Books – Los Angeles, CA 3. Marketing/IT Lackey – Sanrio, Inc. – South San Francisco, CA 4. Science and Technology Editor – The Daily Californian – Berkeley, CA Four movies I can watch over and over: 1. Taxi (1996, France) 2. Le Dîner de Cons (1998, France) 3. The Big Lebowski (1998,…

How is it that the City of Oakland won’t let you pay parking tickets online?

The powers that be have told me that my piece on Librivox will air today on The World (and of course on the Internet on any of these stations’ streams.) New York – 3 pm Eastern – WNYC – 820 AM – www.wnyc.org Washington, DC – 3 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 – WGBH – 89.7 FM –…

I just reviewed the Persian version of Rosetta Stone in this month’s issue of Macworld. Meanwhile, Slate takes on the Danish version. We come to some similar conclusions, including this one, from Slate’s piece: This Lesson 1 stuff is obviously useful—if you want to deploy your new language, the first step is greeting people. While Rosetta Stone’s initial vocabulary list includes “elephant,” “airplane,” and “boat,” it doesn’t have “hello.” Each lesson focuses on grammar building blocks, and there is no…

“San Francisco is a mad city—inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people whose women are of a remarkable beauty.” — Rudyard Kipling From Sea to Sea March – September, 1889 No. XXIII How I Got To San Francisco and Took Tea With the Natives There

This weekend was absolutely gorgeous. Too bad I didn’t have my camera (Becky’s borrowing mine). But it looked a lot like my picture to the left. Yesterday, my Mom and I went walking around the Presidio and Crissy Field and then popped over to Muir Beach for the view. It was so clear that we could see the Farallon Islands, nearly 30 miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge. Amazing. On Saturday, I spent the entire day running around dealing…

THE SCENE: Cyrus and Alan are waiting in line to buy $11 worth of vegetables at Berkeley Bowl on an early Saturday evening. They’re talking about how the parents of Cyrus’ friend Monica have a ginormous house in Castro Valley. A guy standing one checkout aisle over turns to Cyrus. GUY : Is ginormous in the dictionary? CYRUS: I don’t know. But it should be. GUY: Yeah man, we already got Webster’s on that. CYRUS: What about the Oxford New…