Cyrus Farivar

I’ve been in Hartford only a few hours now, after having arrived without any problem at all. I watched some ST:TNG Season 2 while waiting for the plane, and then on the plane until my laptop battery died, and slept the rest of the way. I landed in DC, watched more TNG, got on the plane and slept more. My aunt Heidi picked me up and brought me to the house in West Hartford. The house is a gorgeous two-story…

In response to what Aaron had to say about the events in Spain. Does this mean that Al-Qaeda will be possibly incensed enough to try to pull some stunt in November ’04? Possibly. Or in other world elections? Possibly. But even if they do, does that mean that they’re going to advance their goals any further? No. Will they eventually be defeated? Yes. There simply is more military might, and with time on our side, we’ll eventually get them. I…

Argh. I’m way too busy. I’m stressed out with my trip to the East Coast tomorrow, my Econ homework, my Farsi homework, the stories that I’m working on for various publications, my thesis, worrying about getting a job vs. going to grad school (I got rejections from SIPA [Columbia] and SAIS [Hopkins] today). I’m graduating in two months. Scary. Congrats to Boing Boing for all their success winning at the Bloggies. I’ve been reading for about 9 months or so…

Just when I was starting to get used to this gorgeous weather, I have to head for the frigid East next week. Should be cool, though. Planning on seeing Sina “Herr Doktor” Mohammadi in Boston, which should be cool. Yeah, and I’m supposed to do a story while I’m there, too. Good luck. BCN’s pretty quiet today. I’ve been delving into my thesis a little bit: and have been pondering these paragraphs, which was quoted in a friend of mine’s…

I’m still more or less coherent. My head’s slightly spinny, but I can function. I think I have a pretty high tolerance for alcohol. I got to meet John Markoff today, the illustrious New York Times reporter, which was pretty rad. He was a guest speaker in my J298 Tech Journalism class. Hopefully, between him, Paul Boutin, Joe Menn and Katie Hafner, that I can really get in with the hip tech journalism crowd. On the grad school front, I…

Category: Architecture/Landscape “Arch in Touba” http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~cfarivar/photos/senegal/touba.jpg This is a photo that I took of the mosque in the religious city of Touba. I feel that the arch captures the scene of the buildings in an interesting way. I was able to visit there one weekend during the spring of 2003. Category: Best Use of Color “Dancing” http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~cfarivar/photos/senegal/dancing.jpg This is a picture that I took from the balcony of my host family’s third floor apartment. There was a wedding celebration of…

From foreign to economic to social policy, Bush’s record is a lesson in the limits and perils of conviction. He’s too confident to consult a map. He’s too strong to heed warnings and too steady to turn the wheel when the road bends. He’s too certain to admit error, even after plowing through ditches and telephone poles. He’s too preoccupied with principle to understand that principle isn’t enough. Watching the stars instead of the road, he has wrecked the budget…

Weekend’s been pretty chill thus far. Today I strolled around Berkeley with Giselle and Rachel after hearing Firoozeh Dumas do a reading/signing about Funny in Farsi which was cool. I was happy that it was 70 degrees today for the first time in awhile, and I could meander about like a true Californian in my shorts, t-shirt, sandals, and shades. I bought ST:TNG Season 2 from Rasputin’s on Friday night, which was great. I’m going to watch an episode or…

After work, I went and picked up Giselle at SFO. It’s her first time in California! She seemed pretty astounded to see “hills” — I guess they don’t have those in Canada/Philly. I had parked my car at Millbrae BART for the day and CalTrained into the city. However, I discovered that I’d inadvertandly left my lights on when I returned to my car, a half hour before I was supposed to pick up Giselle. I called AAA, but they…

Well, I got in my third chapter of my thesis draft in this afternoon. Read all 63 pages of its working draft glory here if you’re really interested. I had a great lunch with today in the City, at a place called Henry’s Hunan, just off 2nd, in the SoMa district. That was fun and I ate a lot. And it was spicy, too. 🙂 As Drezner points out, there’s some problems going down in the EU: Less than two…