Aside

Dear Editor, I am writing to you to take issue with your editorial dated February 10, 2006. I find your argument against installing a municipal wireless network in Pleasanton to be overly paranoid and in some cases factually wrong. You wrote that San Francisco has a great deal of “hot spots” and presented a scenario where Pleasanton would become “jammed with laptops.” I work in San Francisco and despite what you may think of our local digerati, Market Street has…

So I’m not the No. 1 “Cyrus” on Google, but I am the No. 1 “Farivar”. If you want to link to my blog with just my first name to increase my Google PageRank, feel free. 🙂

Apparently the LA Times just figured out that there’s TONS of amazing Persian food all over LA. But nevertheless, for the uninitiated, here it is. LA Times: It’s punched-up barbecue, barbecue for the nose: smoky grilled meat swathed with heady scents of saffron, butter, onions and aromatic rice. No wonder the shah of Iran wanted his chelo kebab. About 150 years ago, Naser od-Din Shah was yearning for the kebabs he’d grown up on in Azerbaijan, so he ordered an…

WashPost Op-Ed by William Easterly (via Drezner): Jeffrey Sachs and Angelina Jolie toured the continent on behalf of MTV, with Jolie asking how we can stand by and let it be destroyed. The world’s leaders gathered at the United Nations in September to further discuss ending poverty in Africa, apparently unfazed by yet another voluminous U.N. report highlighting the failure of the grand plans (the “Millennium Development Goals”) to make any progress. They repeated a familiar refrain: If aid efforts…

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 –…