Cyrus Farivar

Apparently in early 2001, David Manilow, one of the creators of “Check, Please!” sold his idea for a food TV show to Chicago’s WTTW. One of the early episodes, filmed in August 2001, featured a young state senator named Barack Obama, who was one member of the four-person panel to review Chicago’s Dixie Kitchen. According to The Internet Food Association: The episode was never broadcast. Obama didn’t seem “amateur” enough, and he dominated the show. But on [January 16 2009],…

Dear Friends, My piece on the American release of Alan’s War aired on The World on December 22. I apologize for the late notice — this got caught up in my vacation backlog. Audio is here. Happy New Year to all!

How come no one told me (sorry, Garett, I’m behind on my RSS feeds) that there was a new Star Trek movie trailer out? Man, this is gonna be SWEET. Also, scope out this YouTube vid of this sweet, new Blue Scholars’ joint: “Coffee and Snow.”

While walking around the European Parliament building last week, I invented a new gang sign. EU in da house, y’allz! We spent a great three days putzing around the Marché de Noël in Strasbourg. We’re now in Paris until Sunday, then Lyon for a night. Then Nate comes and we’ll all head to Lucy’s châlet in Pontcharra for two nights, then back to Lyon for New Year’s and then my birthday on the 2nd. I start teaching again on the…

Holy crap. The Internet of Elsewhere might actually be real — I just filed my first draft. Grand total word count came to about 83,000 words. I’m pretty stoked but also deathly afraid. I apologize if I haven’t been very communicative over these past few weeks as I’ve been trying to pound this thing out. Becks and I are in Geneva for the weekend for the Fête de l’Escalade and to visit my old Italian teacher, Luca Notari. Thanks to…

The Estonian parliament (pictured) has just approved a bill to let Estonian citizens vote via their mobile phone. This makes the country the first country in the world to do so, and comes about 20 months after Estonia held its first nation-wide election where the electorate could cast their ballots online. Mobile phone voting, which likely will come via a new secure SIM card to be used in conjunction with the country’s digital ID card system, will take effect in…

In the last year, I’ve been to Finland (where I bought a temporary SIM card for my three-day trip there). I also have SIM cards for Iran, Estonia, the Netherlands, France, the US, Senegal and others. But once I get home, these SIM cards are useless to me — they sit in my desk drawer. I’m sure there’s hundreds if not thousands of other people worldwide who have a stack of SIM cards that they don’t use much, but keep…

Sanam Dolatshahi, an Iranian blogger now living in Florida, says that the arrest of Hossein Derakhshan has been confirmed by his family in Tehran. The arrest has also been confirmed by a friend of the family’s, as quoted in today’sThe Globe & Mail. To be clear, I myself, have not spoken with anyone in Hoder’s family yet. Sanam writes: My friend Nazli finally got the OK from Hossein Derakhshan’s sister, Azadeh Derakhshan, to publicly announce that Hossein Derakhshan, one of…