E-TIQUETTE

In the end...........

 "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

               -Martin Luther King, Jr.

A NATIONAL ISSUE

Yes it is time some people understand not to abuse freedom of speech. In particular there are TOO MUCH of racial comments against Iranians and muslems. Its also funny to notice those who are abusive and racist happen to claim fighting for democracy and are more democratic.

HOWEVER everything new in Iranian society is, for some reasons, understood in the wrong way. Freedom of speach is just another one. This is a national issue, actions and functions are not done for the right purpose. This web site is being abused and those who created it are also to blame.

Faribors Maleknasri - You're Fired!!!!

Faribors,

Korreh Khar, baz neshasti payeh computer?!! Bacheyeh tokhm-e-haroom, inhameh kafsh moondeh wax bekhoreh, va to neshasti charandiyat minevisi? Boro gomsho, digeh nemikham bebinamet. Boro bargard sar-e-kar sabeghet, va tapaleyeh gaav as to kheyaboonha paak kon. Man fekr kardam to adami av as tapaleh jaam kardan varet dashtam va kardamet shagerd wax zan. Vali mibinam ke adam nisti...bor gomsho ke degeh nabinamet.

Felfeli is RIGHT!

To Curous joe/Slar khan!!!!
I totally agree with Felfeli about your profile,the peroblem is not your opposition to articles and different ideas,it is your rage and foul mouth.

By the way you did read comment about throat cutting??!!

As seagull said what you say is fine you can argue in a respectfull way and no one would jump at you ,but this violent language that you use is a sign of lots of anger botteled up in you during the course of your life and now directing it at inocent commentators.

Anger management courses is the answer to people like you!

To: Dr. Varjavand (2)

Dr Varjavand,
I guess this forum to some degree demonstrates the reason why us Iranians are not "responsible" when it comes to "freedom of the press". We think we can spew all sort of garbage in the name of freedom without being responsible for what we write or say. That may be why for example, with some free press in Iran right after the revolution there was a real meyham and some newspapers had to be closed. That may also be the reson that now US can spend mere "$75M" with the sim of "destabalizing" our nation, mostly through paid commentaires and lies planted in some of our newspapers. When us iranians find a "pen" we stick it in every "hole" we can find, rather than using it responsibly to write something useful. I think, your experience is a demonstration of that habbit. Unfortunately, this iranian.com media in addition is also infested with israeli agents and enemy spies who do not want to see iranians engage in a a real discussion of critical issues, and they attach all sort of tags and name calling to each other (and to authors) in order to supress meanigful exchanges. But the real problem for Iranians is lack of expereince in freedom (not the western slogns of freedom, but real and responsible ones) as well as past history with "freedom" (in my opinion, source of lack of this great expereince was the US-CIA coup in 1953 -- we as a nation lost confidence in ourselves as well as in our great herritage -- one which could teach us how to act responsibly).

Regards,
Ebad

Felfeli. You are out of my radar screen

This is the last time I acknowledge your existence, as I do not even look at the National Enquirer's Magazine at supermarkets' check-out counters.  Your brain is into the same trash, because of the following:

1- You keep on forgetting that varjavand has spent time and effort (and has registered with Iranian.com) to make an OP here.  What is the relevance of your comments to the OP?

2- You keep-on analyzing the background of the commentators on this forum, gossiping and trying to figure out similarities among the commentators.    You simply have nothing to say or add to the OP or any debate, except acting as a paparazzi with a comment, a friend of an FBI agent who likes to guess, an old spaghetti mama peering out of her upstairs window in a village in Italy watching intensely the goings-on below, or a "Dear Abbey" pseudo-psychologist on the prowl.  I suggest you apply for a job with the National Enquirer rather than participating in any debate.

3- And your guesses are all wrong. You keep on equating me with a person called "Salar".  I have no idea who "Salar" is.  I noticed he is another chicken shit (like you) who has not registered with Iranian.com.  What is the matter with you guys?  What are you so afraid of?  You really think anyone gives a shit about your existence on this planet -- including the IRI assassins, the CIA, MOSSAD, the Green Barrette, US Special Forces, Al-Qaida or other throat-cutters?  Don't you think they have better things to do than concentrating on YOU?  Boy -- you sure attach too much importance to yourself!!

:o)

.

fess up!

I don't understand why everyone is tag teaming against curious joe. I know he can rile up people, but I find quite interesting. I have to say salar's writing & character is suspiciously close to curious joe's, on the other hand, Varjavand is possibly using other aliases! (fess up guys! ;) )
.
Anyways, none of that diminishes curious joe's arguments on varjavand's original post. I don't want to be antagonizing to the author, but that article is not subtantiated on any solid ground. It needs to be built up, and be elaborated upon.

.
Peace.

Curious Joe's Case

I passed up the response written by Curious Joe to a colleague of mine (without telling him about the whole story, I just gave him Joe's paragraphs) for more analysis:
These are his assessments: (FBI and all sorts of law enforcement agencies rely on his assessments to issue arrest and search warrantes):

*** Follwoing assessment is not a personal attack***

1 - The person behind the name "Curious Joe" does not hold any advanced degrees. He (or even she) has had a strong desire to do that but has failed. It is likely, but not conclusive, that the person does not hold any form of tertiary education at all.

2 - Most phrases in his writings are copied from books he may have read or by listening to other people speeeches. Advanced tests highlights no linguistic cycles or active neurological patterns in his writtings. In plain English, this means the author is not really thinking about what he/she writes, but writes to impress the reader and attract attention. By doing so, he tries to immitate a dominant personality from whom he has suffered a great deal in past, or he may admire a lot. Examples can include a dominant ex-wife, a forceful father, a much more successful sibling, or a very successful superior in his workplace and so on.

3 - My colleague's assessment is in line with my own analysis, concluding the article written by "Salar" exhibits an almost identical pychological structure with "Curious Joe".

For Just-a-Guy (JAG)

No JAG, I do not brag about registration.  The only difference between registration versus not-doing-so is that if you register, then you can post your own OP.  After all, if you have a strong opinion about an issue, why sidetrack and hijack other people’s OP to make your point on a totally different subject?  Why not post your own OP and defend your own stand – especially when people (like me) start to question your stand – not merely to be patronizing, condescending, or argumentative -- but wanting to learn from your research and  know-how that  prompted you to make your post.

Believe me, I do not intend to insult anyone.  I always try to provide some references to support my argument.  Unfortunately nobody seems to click on them.  Do you know the number of times I have sighted references from Richard Dawkin’s 2007 book called “The God Delusion”? Do you think anyone has bothered to read it?  Of course not.  They seem to be happy enough to continue reading the 1400 year old book “Qoran”, or the 2000 year old book “Bible” or its Jewish predecessor: “The Old Testament/Torah”.

Of course the author of this article is a real person called varjavand.  And I have no intention or desire to offend him, or hijack his OP into a different subject.  I have already addressed his issue in a comment below.  I am sure if he wants more comments from me to his current OP, he’d invite me to do so.

For Curious Joe

Joe,
Do not brag about your registered name. All it means is that you have occupied a little hard disk space on one of Jahansha's servers.

I am not registered but if you look at my responses, you know my education, my specialization, even my starting salary, my state, my employer, and what I do.
The author of this article is also a real person.
What do we know about you? Nothing. Registration has nothing to do with anonymity.
Your line of argument and logic is too dry. Everything has got to have reference. Everything must have complete proof. Everything must have an academic flare. Everything is evaluated in the context of PhD, thesis, and publications. There is no space for lateral thinking. There is no space for creative approach. No tolerance for experiment. Everything should appeal to know-it-all Curious Joe otherwise he start lecturing others. You remind me of the Russian mathematics professor who had published a paper, proving it is impossible to fly with an object heavier than air. Russian academy of sciences had published the paper, with much fanfare, a few weeks before wright brothers fly their first aircraft :)

Why curoius joe changed name to salar?

I made him aware that his name is a carton monkey character,and with the low self esteem that he has he changed it to SALAR!!!!
yes you are really big NOW SALAR!!!!and your new name makes you credible!!!!!
You know we are not going to judge your foul filty mouth because you are a SALAR!!!
You must really feel POWERFULL now!!!SALAR KHN !why not add a khan to it too it helps your self esteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeem!

Dr Varjavand

Dr Varjavand,
I guess this forum to some degree demonstrates the reason why us Iranians are not "responsible" when it comes to "freedom of the press". We think we can spew all sort of garbage in the name of freedom without being responsible for what we write or say. That may be why for example, with some free press in Iran right after the revolution there was a real meyham and some newspapers had to be closed. When us iranians find a "pen" we stick it in every "hole" we can find, rather than using it responsibly to write something useful. I think, your experience is a demonstration of that habbit. Unfortunately, this media in addition is also infested with israeli agents and enemy spies who do not want to see iranians engage in a a real discussion of real issues, and they attach all sort of tags and name calling in order to supress meanigful exchanges. But the real problem is lack of expereince in freedom (not the western slogns version, but real and responsible one) and past history with "freedom" (in my opinion, source of lack of this great expereince the US coup in 1953).

Regards,
Ebad

Curious Joe and Salar are the same individuals

Hello All,
Curious Joe and Salar are online names used by the same person.
Clever move? Yes.
Curious Joe is good at changing his writing style quickly, but as I said footprints are there.

Nice job "Curious Joe". Or would you prefer to be called "Salar"?!!

If you have something worthwhile to say, pick a worthwhile issue

This is in response to the unregistered “commentators” on this site who are afraid to register to Iranian.com   Are you afraid of something to register?  Could your point-of-views (POV) be emanating from a sense of fear?  Fear of what?

Now that we have established the fact that most commentators here are a mere bunch of fearful chicken-shits with nothing original to say, lets get down to the real business of responding to the OP by varjavand.

Fact: Verjavand has made 2 posts to this forum. One was “defying conventional wisdom” dated 14 January 2008, and the second was his tantrum entitled “Modern Maturity” dated 18 January 2008.

Fact: I have learnt through the school of hard-knox the alphabets and protocols of participating in message boards such as www.straightdope.com since the 1970s, when the Internet came to existence.  While Iranian.com’s motto is “nothing is sacred”, if you bother to click on Straightdope.com site, and you read the motto at the top, you’ll find that we have been fighting ignorance since 1973.  Please recognize that you are new to this game in 2008. Some people have been at it, posting and debating since 1973.  You have a long way to go to learn the protocols of this game.  If you don’t know what you are talking about and cannot support your argument with CREDIBLE references, then you are a troll and you are talking bullshit.  As you know, an “opinion” is the same as an ass-hole.  Everyone has one.  Next time you express an “opinion”, please substantiate it with lots of CREDIBLE references that we can check to find out where your “opinion” is coming from.

Fact: Let’s go to your Jan 14th post entitled “Defying Conventional Wisdom”.  You said ”I want to argue that overcrowding should not be viewed as a curse, but rather a blessing. If you decide to live in a crowded city, you do so voluntarily”.   First of all, give us some CREDIBLE references to support your opinion/claim.  You talk as if those who go to overcrowded cities, they do it based on choice.  Yeah – it is like saying “United States.  Love it or leave it”, or worse: “Planet Earth. Love it or leave it”.  What happened to the argument:  “If it is awful, let’s change it”.  You seem to ASSuME that people pour to the cities because of choice.  That is an assumption on your part.  And you know what happens when you ASSuME:  You make an ASS of you and ME.   Tehran’s overcrowding is a blessing?  Please give me one CREDIBLE reference to support your argument.

Fact: You said: “You enjoy the life amenities that are only available in big cities: restaurants, fast food, cultural events, fancy stores, shopping malls, etc.”.  But who are the millions of people who poured into Tehran from villages?  Are they the ones that are enjoying the amenities and cultural events – or are they the soosools who went from the US for a 30 day vacation to the home of their rich families and their parties in the north of Tehran?  What on earth are you talking about? Fact:  You said: “the bigger the number of people who live with you, the better is the prospect for new technology and the greater is the chance for additional income”.  Are you talking about the friends of your rich relatives who “live with you”, or are you talking about the peasant from Abarghoo who came to Tehran to get a piece of bread?  Your relatives probably won’t even hire the guy as a servant in their home, unless he has at least a PhD to teach the kids some English while the parents are shopping in London and Paris.Fact:  You said:  “Historically, human life started to improve as soon as we began to live together. We became urbanized, richer and wealthier. We live longer and make more and better products. While we work less, we produce more”.  Please, please, please.  If that is a quote from anything you did read from your 1st year in undergraduate school to your last year of PhD thesis, I’d like to know the reference.  I would revolt vehemently and make the author of that reference to prove the statement.  If he/she can’t, I will have the universities remove that statement from the curriculum. So far, the above facts were the reasons for abruptly dismissing your post.  Sorry if my comments were not gentle and PC.  But these days, there is so much BS is going on that you have to cut the BS and get to the point.If you want me to comment on your current post, please let me know.  It takes a lot of time to explain things… Looking forward to read your next opinion, hopefully supported by CREDIBLE references that I can check and determine how you reached that opinion.Cheers, Curious Joe

Rule of nature

It's rule of nature: The more of something you have , the less valuable it gets;
Why are you fighting over over-population? Yes, over-population is major part of the issue we are facing all over the world as it comes to spread of wealth, wars, medical issues. But then, overpopulation is a result of prosperity. Once the population reaches a critical mass (overpopulation) nature tries to correct it via pandemi, epidemic deseases, wars, hunger......

REPLY : OVERCROWDED?

1. Living conditions are in a great part of the world not just so easy as in othwer parts. In Tehran it can be also ditrectly difficult to manage the daily life. However the mayor of that city does his best to make a better and easier dialy life for the citizens of that city. Please just acknowledge the folloewing:The mayor of the Iranian capital of Tehran, Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf, has been elected among 50 finalists of the 2008 World Mayor contest.

Citizens from all over the world took part in record numbers in the first round of the 2008 World Mayor contest, which was carried out in 2007.

More than 100,000 voters nominated a total of 820 mayors for this year's World Mayor Award, the worldmayor.com reported.

According to city residents from all continents, a great mayor must possess these qualities: good administrative abilities, able to provide safety and security and protect the environment, as well as having the ability to foster good relations between communities from different cultural, racial and social backgrounds.

Based on the number of nominations and the persuasiveness of supporting statements, City Mayors, the organizers of the World Mayor project, has drawn up a list of 50 finalists. The list includes 11 mayors from Asia, 10 from North America and 11 from Latin America, 15 from Europe, as well as 3 from Africa.

Some of the finalists for this year's World Mayor title are from the world's best-known and largest cities, while others represent smaller communities. Most of this year's finalists have been short-listed for the first time. Under the World Mayor rules, winners and runners-up from previous years were not eligible.
I personaly am not a "FAN" of Mr. Qalibaf. Up to my opinion for tehran they had better found a mayor who were willing to continuenthe way of the farmer mayor, who is now the president of the ISLAMIC REPUBLIC of IRAN. But i am also aware that what I mean does not and should not count. It is a fact that Mr. Qalibaf is a good mayor, whatever "good" should mean
2. according to your Remarks, Dr. Varjavand, about thoughtfully craft......... and so on. I must say that again up to my opinion "IRANIAN" is not the place to disccuss maters which are worth to be disccussed. "IRANIAN" is just a place where nothing is sacred. In order to let to come in just EVERYTHING. The Result is that lots of cultural, verbal, ethical and other SPAMS come in, so that the minimal % of thouthfull and also sometimes things just to enjoy disappear in the Overload of the nonesenses. I am also glad that we have the "IRANIAN" and i see for myself no other solution accept to differntiate the goods from the bads also it costs a lot of time which could be used better else. Greeting

Salar: Again you missed the point

My salary was 60K which was very low, specially for a person with a PhD and some experience, in an expensive place like silicon Valley.

I am sure Dr. Virjavand has his own reasons for what he has written in his article but I refuse to call him unwise because his logic may seem obscure to me. I may be the one who does not get his reasoning. I may be the one who needs more education on the topic. Instead of attacking him, I would ask him questions. Nobody did this. Unfortunately, as a community, most of us all-wise, educated, kourosh-lover persians from the land of history and culture and art, who are not Arabs at all but love Kebabs, who were forced to convert to Islam and that is the root of all our problems, with 6000 years of history, fake blonde hair and nose jobs, who are occasionally unable to speak Farsi even we have lived there for 30 years, who are even sometimes Italian or Greek, who are intellectuals but unable to write a paragraph without using "F" and "S" words, are too full of ourselves to consider this very simple fact: "MAY BE I NEED TO DISCUSS IT. MAYBE I NEED TO RESEARCH IT. MAYBE WE NEED TO DEBATE IT. MAY BE HE IS RIGHT". No way, It is always the other person's fault. We are always right and that is about it. We do not need any reason for it.

The same attitude shows up in our driving, in our dating, in our family relationships, in our national soccer team, in our politics, in our business dealings. Then, we claim we want democracy.

We were not lucky at Google since we were working easily 80 hours/week during those early years. We had a flexible attitude towards people's opinions. We would not put down anybody because he/she had a seemingly dodgy opinion. Google is literally built on obscure and dodgy ideas and practices, a large part of it remains unknown to the outside world, even today. It was this attitude and the mutual respect that made Google what it is today not luck.

Thank you for this valuable subject

I think only the cultured and responsible individuals are capable of brushing away the effects of their character-issues and communicate in a polite and respectfull medium.

Let's hope we use the power of reason and self-respect and move towards this goal.

Peace;

Mona 19

Excellent

Felfeli

Totally Completely 100% agree with you. Does initials "K.S." ring a bell?

Varjavand = Just-a-Guy == Hajiagha's cousin

Just-a-Guy: you are comparing apples to oranges. And please don’t confuse luck with justifiable reasoning. Every startup starts in someone’s basement and initially tight on finances but I am sure they paid you well enough to afford a used car, in particular in case of google. Your story is hardly believable especially if you can drive “through” your ex-girlfriend’s parents house to say hi. Perhaps they were not as super achievers as you thought if you can drive right through their house. so please, don't argue just for the sake of arguing, try to stay on the topic.
If they took away Varjavand's name and his claim having a PhD in the past two articles and showed it to most people on this site or anywhere, they would think this character Hajii’s cousin has written them. Same line of reasoning as hajiagha but better English. Honestly, That’s what I thought at first when I read these two pieces, and I am still suspecting someone is posing and using Varjavand‘s name for these writings, perhaps someone needs to notify Dr varjavand about this. Since all of them including your comment “Just a Guy” show a highly incoherent and unsound line of reasoning and thought patterns that could’ve only originated from someone’s brain (or should I say lack of brain) like this Hajiagha character or his cousins on this site. ok, it's a waist arguing with Haji's crowd any further.

Thank you Mr Varjavand

I totally support what you are saying.This person curious joe(which I was just telling him to be quiet in another article)is so foul mouthed and ignorant .I am not sure but he seems wierd!!!!
People like him they use foul mouth to make us angry,and hopeless about our fellow hamvatanan.Their strategy is to stop us from having civil conversations,they want us to be intimidated.
By not falling for their tactics,and supporting each other (even if we do not agree on a subject) we can stop them.
Please keep writing and we all have to write and talk more.
with the hope of freedom for our beautiful land,
respectfully,
Tahirih

Get ready, here it comes!! Ad hominum!!

You have a funny nose! HAH! Take that Varijavand !!(shake my fist in the air). Cower before my awesome Iranian Ad Hominum attack aimed at you!!... ok.. that was not funny.. I know.. and yeah I agree with you..

Salar: read my second point

Well,
I read your article and your logic seemed very excotic and arguable but I did not express opinion for two reasons:
1 - I am not an economist.
2 - In 1997, after finishing my own PhD in computer science, I turned down an offer from a few prestigeous settings to join a lowly startup in California with a low salary. My opinion was that I had made a very "sound judgement". However, my gray-hair, all-wise advisors were pissed off and considered it a poor choice. My fiance, with full support of her proud Iranian-American super achiever parents, left me arguing she could do better than being with a man on such a small salary, unable to afford even a second hand car. There is, however, a point in this story. The startup's name was "Google". I still sometimes drive through her parents' house and they see me. The mother, in particular, looks very pale whenever I say hello to her.
It is a good thing to be open about, and deeply examine, the ideas which may seem illogical and even faltly dodgy.

A kindly tongue is the lodestone of the hearts of men.

*******************************************************
To: all
My Dear fellow Iranian

Consort with all men, in a spirit of friendliness and fellowship. If you be aware of a certain truth, if you possess a jewel, of which others are deprived, share it with them in a language of utmost kindliness and good-will.

If it be accepted, if it fulfill its purpose, your object is attained. If any one should refuse it, leave him unto himself, and beseech God to guide him. Beware lest ye deal unkindly with him.

A kindly tongue is the lodestone of the hearts of men. It is the bread of the spirit, it clothe the words with meaning, it is the fountain of the light of wisdom and understanding….

Regard,
Mona

Cut the mustard, not

One day I complained to our housemother that this building is too noisy. She told me astonishingly,” if you don’t like noise, don’t make any”. Her illogical logic applies here too.

How about Modern Logic and Reasoning?!?!

I am going to try to be as polite as I can. When I first saw your original article on this site and read the first few sentences, I stopped and thought, yet another Iranian who goes to iran after 30+ yrs for short time and all of sudden thinks he has figured it all out and must let others know about it. Comes back describing what he has seen and develops an argument trying to reason his points based on his narrow observations over there. So I didn’t continue reading the rest. After this one appeared, I went back and read it. What you saw there is a known fact, Tehran and big cities are overcrowded. But your reasoning and logic to argue your points based on that well-known fact are just at best ridiculous and to be honest with you, not something you’d expect from someone who has gone thru a phd program even at a 3rd tier school in this country or anywhere for that matter. If someone even at masters level showed up for his thesis defense at some place like CMU or NYU and used that line of reasoning, he’d be not graduating for a long time, if ever and be getting not so pleasant reaction from his committee members and advisor, much worse that the reactions you got in comments section of your original post. Again in this article you are doing the same, for example, assuming based on your own judgment that your points were “balanced and reasoned” and reaching more unsound conclusions. Common, let’s practice some common sense here.

I'm fairly new to this site.

I'm fairly new to this site. Hello to all. I'm just guessing that the person (s) who insulted you were annoyed by your "super-intelligent" statements of the problems without seeing you offering any solutions. This is typical of today's intellectual minds to use big old words when expressing problems but to exercise silence when it's time to offer actual, practical and reasonable solutions.
If i'm wrong, doctor, then I apologize !

Felfeli

Dear Dr. Varjavand,
The person who attacked you (Curious Joe) writes all sorts of fake and fabricated materials around the web, under different names. He observes you are an educated person with a PhD, he simply gets angry.
I posted some of his postings on other sites under your article. He got angry with me as well. Go and have a look at his writing style. He is a person with problems and issues. A lot of us have deep psychological problems and anonymity offered by Internet is a safe channel to vent it out.
He used to attack people in this site under other names as well. He has come back with a different name and a fresh style, but what he does not know is that when we write, specially under the influence of emotions, we leave a lot of clear psychological footprints and patterns in our writing. I am a forensic psychologist and my expertise is to identify people based on their writings for solving difficult criminal cases.
You can not really let these people stop you. Just ignore them and they go away. Just keep contributing.
A note to our readers:
The number of abusers on this website is much less than you think. Each one simply uses different names for different occasions. As I said, this is my job and I have done a lot of analysis on writings of this website.