Cyrus Farivar

This is the most comprehensive train travel site I’ve ever seen. Truly amazing.

Starting July 12, 2006, you can fly direct to the Azores. Wow.

Slate; “Abu, Ibn, and Bin, Oh My!” ; July 3, 2006 : The term can also be used in a more colloquial sense. A guy with a moustache might be called “Abu Shanab,” or “father of moustache.” You could even refer to a place or object as “the father of” a certain quality. “Shibshib abu khamsa gnieh” literally means “flip-flops, father of $5,” but it would be taken to mean “a $5 pair of flip-flips.” Similarly, the place name Abu…

I’ve posted the instructions on MacUser.

I’m not sure that the Swiss analogy fits 100 percent, but this is an intriguing idea nonetheless: You might call it a “dual state.” Instead of the familiar formula in which two states exist side by side, Israel and Palestine would be two states superimposed on top of one another. Citizens could freely choose which system to belong to. Their citizenship would be bound not to territory, but to choice. The Israeli state would remain a homeland for Jews, and…

Mark Pilgrim‘s blog has taught me two things today: 1) HOWTO make the perfect fruit salad and get laid 2) On storage, from the comments: My uncle works for NASA. Years ago, he was called in to consult for the government on how to store some important data. Tape drives? CDs? (This was before DVDs.) His response was this: “If you write it on papyrus and lock it in a pyramid, we know it will last a few thousand years.…

My second cousin, Karim Sadjadpour, an analyst on Iran, is giving a talk on Iran right here in San Francisco at the World Affairs Council of Northern California. Thursday, July 13 2006 Registration 5:30 PM, Program 6:00 PM, Members – FREE, Nonmembers – $15, Student nonmembers – $5 World Affairs Council Auditorium, 2nd floor, 312 Sutter St., San Francisco

Apparently, I’m not good enough for Wikipedia anymore. Round 1 (Concluded : April 14, 2005) Round 2 (Concluded : August 6, 2005)

My review of Once In A Lifetime is in today’s San Francisco Chronicle. While most soccer fans are enjoying the World Cup, probably only the aficionados among them will remember when Brazilian superstar Pelé took his place as part of a short-lived soccer team in the United States. “Once in a Lifetime: The Incredible Story of the New York Cosmos” tells how that team, made up of all-stars, the likes of which have never been seen since on an American…

Veljo and I walked around Telegraph and around campus this afternoon. Seeing Cody’s in its dying days is quite sad — many of the bookshelves, particularly in the back of the store are totally empty. It looks like they’re going to turn that space into two retail locations. They also had a slide show of some of the early days of Cody’s playing on a computer there — before it was Cody’s it was a Shell station. Who knew? Also…