Cyrus Farivar

My wonderfully food nerdy friends on Chowhound have put together a Google Maps edition of Oakland taco trucks. Oh man, I want a burrito right about now.

The New Yorker has an awesome piece this week on “The Wire,” the best TV show ever. In addition to detailing why the show is generally awesome, there’s these two fantastic bits from the show’s creator, David Simon. The New Yorker: “The Wire,” [David] Simon often says, is a show about how contemporary American society—and, particularly, “raw, unencumbered capitalism”—devalues human beings. He told me, “Every single moment on the planet, from here on out, human beings are worth less. We…

I came across these delights on Paleo-Future: The Electric Train from Paris to Beijing Flying police Hearing the newspaper (aka “radio”) Cars of war (aka “tanks)

It’s often been said that half the population of Iran is under 30. However, according to the new census data, 50.23 percent of the population is under 25. Damn.

The most interesting thing that I learned from Karim‘s talk last week, which was also mentioned in Afshin Molavi’s The Soul of Iran , which I’m reading now, is the following: As opposed to other developing nations whose per capita incomes have always been low but have steadily increased, the majority of Iranians have experienced a marked decrease in their standard of living since the 1979 revolution; average Iranians’ real per capita income is about a quarter of what it…

After the $100 laptop project, the fact that India’s building a $2,500 car got me interested. So I pinged Atanu Dey to see what his thoughts were on the subject, and here’s what he said: Cyrus: It scares me witless. Today oil touched $84 a barrel. India imports most of its fossil fuel requirements. It is a poor country and cannot afford high priced oil — and oil is going to become increasingly costly because the demand will continue to…

WashPost: The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group’s communications network. “Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless,” said Rita Katz, the firm’s 44-year-old founder, who has garnered wide attention by publicizing statements and videos from…

During my freshman year at Berkeley (that’s 2000), I wrote an article for The Daily Californian about how Pleasures, a sex toy shop in Alabama, was being supported by Berkeley’s own Good Vibrations. Good Vibrations, a Berkeley sex toy store, is supporting the cause of Sherri Williams, owner of Pleasures, a small chain of sex shops in northern Alabama, whose business may be in jeopardy. In 1998, the Alabama Legislature passed a bill that added a ban on the sale…

My cousin, Karim Sadjadpour, will be speaking at 5:30 pm tomorrow at 145 Dwinelle Hall on the UC Berkeley campus to talk about Iran. He’ll speak for about 40 minutes followed by a Q&A. The event is being hosted by Harry Kreisler, Executive Director of the Institute of International Studies.

The overwhelming majority of Iranians are neither Moslem nor Communist fanatics. They are illiterate and poverty-ridden peasants without any clear political conscience. Tell them their lot is well night intolerable, and they will instantly agree. Their basic attitude is one of hatred of government. The government to them is a symbol of oppression; it is the tax collector who squeezes the poor and the grafter who mulcts the state. Wide sections of the population are ripe for communism. — “Iran…