Sic Semper Tyrannis

Americans & Science

What is an American other than either a Native or immigrant. Of course Americans make great scientists. That includes the British; German; Iranian; Italian; Indian; Chinese; Greek; Japanese; French immigrants!

The one thing here is that people go to professions where they are rewarded. It is the law of supply and demand. There is not a lot of need for theoretical physicists. Therefore most Americans do not study it. The graduate schools actually discourage you. When I was a student computers skills were rewarded; many went there. A lot of Russian guys out of Soviet Union at the time went in Physics and Math. Because they were raised to think that is what "brightest" do. 

America is very market driven. Any second generation immigrant will have those values. Therefore you may expect them to go in whatever market demands.

M.Ghasem

Glad you mentioned red wine. Wouldn't want people to think I'm the only history Wion here. ;o))

Phillipe Starck and The Diva of Hafez

I certainly didn't approve of the diva being ganged up on, but to my mind, there was the usual deeply insecure inferiority complex, which needed to attach itself to heralded names.

Question is though: if Philippe Starck had designed a new aftabeh or Yamamoto had designed the portable bidet, would some of you look at an aftabeh differently?

P.S. I don't get the point of this blog at all. For its claims in a lot of comments, there seem to be loads of anecdotal, rather partial experiences cited for some purpose unbeknown to me and btw, as for the divisions between science and the arts and humanities, in case, some of you have missed it: there has been, for the past few decades or so, a fast emerging Renaissance, which I 'celebrate' by trying to understand it. 

Aha! We invented the truly

Aha! We invented the truly Iranian concept of khaayeh-maal and pashm! Pashm and khaayeh maali are quintessentially Persian!

Go to Persepolis. What do u see on all the walls? A bunch of reeshoo khaayeh maals bearing gifts to a great king.

Go to Beyt-e rahbari. What do u see? An ocean of Pashm becoming zowb-e velaayat!

We also invented beer.

Beer was first brewed, and enjoyed by ancient civilisations living in present day Iran, probably before we turned Aryan, but who cares?  I am not going to even mention Cyrus's famous cylinder, which unknown to thicko fake "doctor" Ahmadinezhad who seems to be fascinated by it's shape and sheer size, contains key messages on human rights by a king who ruled our beloved, yet currently bleeding land, 2500 years ago...

Dear AO, thanks for another  great blog, although I believe lots of friends have completely missed the underlying, yet clear message.

cheers! 

"Personal business must yield to collective interest."

بچه‌ها بلند شین عبدوه اومده چک بزنه

a.o., there are a multitude of issues and remedies raised by the commenters for your blog. very good comments, in fact. lack of innovation, say in the past millenia, has many underlying factors.  sorry to say, that i agree with one of the commenters that reading poetry is not one of those factors.  one can argue that if it wasn't for poetry, we'd be conversing in arabic and english right now.

just to keep the audience at ease (i know that goes against your m.o.), we can compare innovation in a sterile fashion, in an economic framework.  the numerous innovations in the u.s. in the past few decades is not due to lack of poetry but an environment that protects intellectual rights and induces individuals to innovate and reap the awards (profits) of their creativity and hard work.  with all the brain power of the soviets in their closed society, they gave the world moskvich (you know the car) while the americans produced cars that to this day are considered works of art.  there are virtually no intellectual rights protection in iran at the moment.  we all know of all the u.s. made products, software, music, ... that are copied, marketed, and sold in iran.  one can compare the progress and innovation of many closed economy countries to that of countries with more liberal economies and "property rights" protections.

rampant corruption and injustice is another force (not to be confused with regular corruption and injustice) that works against innovation.  even during the pre-revolution era, one could not easily enter an industry.  we were the 1000-family country, remember.  construction business was one that was cornered by a few back then and is still now.  the free (or easily obtained) entry/exit environment in the economics nomenclature has never existed in iran.  i could go on and on but will stop with the story of a great iranian visionary, one of my heros, who was axed by the monarchy right before the revolution: the man who revolutionized team sports in iran.  mr. abdoh who owned perspolis and other clubs, the man who built soccer fields across iran as a farm system to the professional soccer league which he helped create (not to mention bowling abdoh) was stripped off all his wealth because he rubbed some people the wrong way in shah's darbar.  this man worked decades of his life and died as a poor man outside the country soon after revolution. you can see how this type of corruption and injustice can kill innovation.  when abdoh died and went to heaven, you could hear the chant: "bacheh-ha boland shin, abdoh oomadeh chak bezaneh." 

book of poetry?

that was good. you probably are a good poet,have you  blogged your poems on ic?

One last thing and everyone else

One last thing: poetry is so important to us that our self proclaimed experts on poets demand to be treated like royalty.  Remember Hafez for Beginners?  She was besides herself because one of her blogs was not featured on the front page.  She threw a fit, wrote a couple of complaint blogs and then "ghahr kard" and deleted all of her blogs!  

Everyone else: Sorry I can't respond toe everyone tonight.  It's late and I have to review my book pf potery before I go to bed, like I do every night. :-))  Perhaps will respond tomorrow.   

Divaneh & Oon Yaroo

Divaneh Jaan:  I think 'm already on Mr. sadat Nooris' s**tlist.  he was once trying to prove God's existence through potery...and let's just say that I disagreed with him and he didn't like it.  Anyway, I think you're on the right track.  I am not against artistic expression, including poetry.  What I see, however, is a culture that is more titled toward philosophy than science.  It's a cultural thing.  Greece is a good example.  In fact, I mentioned it as an example in a comment on the subject to Mr. Ala (who construed it as insulting Iran's poets.)  Greeks are a part of another philosophy based culture.  they happen to also be very proud of their ancient accomplishment.  Hence, they are in the same boat that we are, although a bit more advanced as they are not ruled by the only theocracy in the 21st century, and their women can venture onto the street without a veil and wiyhout the resulting fear of arrest and humiliation.  We just have our cultural priorities wrong.  That's all.

Oon Yaroo jaan: Vaajebi is definitely an original Iranian invention.  Have not seen it anywhere else in the world.  So, we can count that one for us. 

Faramarz, Mehrban, HG and Anahid

Faramarz: You are correct.  Organization, planning and teamwork are building blocks of an effective, progressive and orderly society.  We have very few of any of those elements.  Have you seen people in Iran's streets?  They're five feet from a trash can and STILL throw their trash on the ground.  I almost got in a fight with someone over this very issue the last time I was in Iran.  The guy was big too.  Could have kicked my butt all over the place.  Don;t know how I got out of that one in one piece!

Mehrban Jaan:  Those are pretty big shoes to fill.  I'm not even within a million miles of Plato.  Thanks for the thoughts though.

HG - I will agree to being a Saghi on two conditions: 1) no chelo kabab as part of the "bazm," and 2) I will refuse to wear the "saghi" dress---you know, the flowing flowery one.  Will not do it.  Also, I will not carry the "piyaleh" (is that what it's called?) on my shoulder. :-)

Anahid:  Speaking of the biting the hand that feeds you, poor JJ allows me to post my blogs here, and is nice enough features one or two, and what do I do in return?  I make fun of his khaleh!!  Vaghean keh ---what a "bi cheshm va roo" person I am. :-( 

Fesenjoon and Samsam

Fesenjoon - There are many other groups in this country who have done more, much more than Iranians to contribute to scientific and cultural advancement of their community.  I agree with you and everyone else (Anahid I believe) who said that Americans are quite capable science students as well.  I was lucky to go to a decent college. Many of my college classmates are prominent in various scientific fields (not me, I ended up doing the non-sexy work of being an animal behavior specialist, knee deep in snow looking for deer poop.  My father still asks me "so, eight years of college and graduate school..all this money, and what is it that you exactly do?")  Some of my classmates are Ivy League professors.  A couple are Iranian.  The rest are overwhelmingly American.  So, this whole Iranian invented self aggrandizing (and, as usual, American humiliating) notion that Americans are not smart is just BS.

Samsam bro: It's the sheikhak culture.  Hafez is the MAN...not for us, but to the ommat-e hezbollah.  And as far as this whole genetic race nonsense, the that clown didn't even clarify to us as to exactly what race we are.  He says it's a distinct race.  What is it?  I don't think he meant Ilami.  Weren't they Semites?  Who cares anyway bro.  Keep up the good work.  Shad zi!

This is declaring war on Dr Saadat Noury

Are you trying to say that Dr Saadat Noury is responsible for our backwardness? :)

Joking aside, I was a little confused with your blog AO jaan. OK let’s say poetry is our strength. Is it right to assume that our strength in one dimension is responsible for our weakness in other dimensions? Is it a good assumption to think that a person will either be a poet or a scientist? What has poetry got to do with Sufism? Ok, poetry is heavily used by Sufis but so what? Our greatest poets in my view are Ferdowsi and Saadi, and none of them was a sufi and in the contrary had great devotion to the physical world and the so much needed wisdom. There are many others such as Khayam, Naser Khosro and Zakani, but I mentioned those two for their literary perfection in their own styles.

I agree with you that we have many weaknesses of which one of the biggest is our general inability to work as a team as mentioned by Faramarz. I do not enter that discussion but as you and many others have mentioned our lack of respect for science and physical world during many centuries have brought us here.  

The answer to some of your questions such as did Iranians discover chemicals or wild life and plants is yes, but that is not the point. When we look at the history of human development we can see that in each era, a part of the globe has pioneered the development and human advances. Iranians in their time had a fair share of contribution to mathematicians, chemistry, construction, medicine, agriculture and many other fields. Greeks have not been doing much in the last 1000 years (apart from eating souvlaki and borrowing money :) ) but no one deny their contribution to the human development. We are an ill society who is infected by the religion virus of which Sufism is one symptom and once we are healed we can be a positive force for advancement again. We however need to work towards that future.

Sad but true!

Three reasons why Iranian culture and creativity have been stagnant and stuck in gell like a kharr!

1) The cultural/religious notion that one is on this Earth to convert oxygen to CO2, H2O to shash, and wheat to poop just for the mere purpose and sake of going to Behesht! In other words, the real life is in the "other" world, out there and not here and now! 

2) Underground resources (nafft) which has become an easy commodity (at least for the past 100 years) for obtaining everything we can't build or invent! So, why should one work hard? Creativity requires hard work!

3) Normal/Gaussian distribution of intelligent/productive/innovative cultures has a symmetric shape. Some cultures are right around the mean, some are several standard deviations above the mean, and some like Iranian and Ayrabs are several standard deviations below the mean! 

The sum of 1, 2, and 3 conspires to create an environment called IRI or Pakistan, or the likes!

Finally, don't be so down on the creativity of Iranian culture! Here are some innovations:

1) Vajebee,

2) Doolcheh,

3) Mangal & B(V)afoor,

4) Taryak,

5) Pasheh-band,

6)Abgoost,

7) Abdoogkhyar,

8) Toobreh,

8) Sang'e Paw,

9) Loneg,

10) Jaghool Baghool!

Somewhere around 100 million Americans and Europeans day in and day out conduct research and development for the discovery and innovation of
better, faster, and more useful things for life, heath, and comfort!?

How many Iranians in Iran do that on a daily basis!?

For those interested in 'Faza, marze beekaran"

 I hope I remembered correctly, if not, fans should correct me. Today there was news about evidence of lake on Europa which is Jupiter's moon. I posted a news item about it and here is the link which ultimately takes you to news item which was posted in Discovery.

//iranian.com/main/news/2011/11/17/life-bearing-lake-possible-icy-jupiter-moon

by the way, AO does have some good points. even though as a child and teen I loved persian literature, I decided not to study literature at the university level and just do it as a hobby. So honestly, even as a teen, I must have agreed on some level with AO because I did not pursue poetry. Instead, I decided to make it a hobby. Even then, it is only few years that I am spending time on poetry.  For more than 20 years, I was not doing any work or even studying on poetry, that is why I am not a hafez khan.

AO wrote inhis blog:"

Now some will surely jump in and claim that there are many Iranian scientists outside of Iran.  They don’t count.  A person who was either born here, came here as a young child, or went to college outside of Iran doesn’t count.  They belong to the country that provided them with the education and the opportunities, and most importantly, they belong to the society that gave them the cultural derive to get them where they are.  In other words, that society steered them away from poetry nights (shab-e-she’er) and reading Hafez, to actual curiosity about science and the world around them.  "

however, I still like to emphasize that there is no contradiction between poetry and science but as a truth, it is difficult tob e a young person in US building  a career n science and be able to spend much time in poetry nights.

That's about the size of it!

Thank you AO.

There is a lot of emphasis by many Iranians about our noble blood and Aryan DNA. Let's take that as a given and put it in the context of your blog.

Thousands of years ago we governed a bunch of "Koor & Kachal" from Central Asia to Central Europe. OK, cool, we were sharper than them and we deserve all the credit. But recently we haven't done much.

The sports arena is a good place to gauge a country's make up.

Where we shine is in individual sports, weightlifting, wrestling and a few other sports. And where we fail is in the team sports that require organization, cooperation and following the rules.

کی جان و هم ميهنان عيلامی

  ما عيلامی ها  1400 ساله در شعر و کرس شعر  و شر و وره شيخ  غرقيم(بجز فردوسي) .   اين ازمايشات دکتر کچل بورسي چي بی بی سی هم که اب پاکی رو دست همتون پاشيد  و بقول اقای شهامدين قياصی و افغانها در بلاگش :دمه بريتانی گرم که  نشون داد شما کفار ايراني (اووپس عيلامي)  نژادتون هم چاخانه و اصلتون از يه نژاد وحشی و گمنامه و کارتون کش رفتنه و مال خور کردن دانشمندان عرب و مسلمان و افغان به حساب خودتونه..

ولی خوب اينم بگم بهت عی عو جان که گهی پشت به زين و گهی زين به پشت..که 1000 سال اول ,افسر به دنيا بوديم  و 1000 سال دوم اصغر به دنيا :)  کسی که به ما نريده بود ,ملا عمر دريده بود.

چييرز مای عيلامی برادر

کشک و دوغ و می و حشیش یون در کارند

افلاطون مستبدی فلسفی بیش نبود. اما ارسطو ,(خصوصا در جنبش اسماعیلیه و  کوشش در خرد ورزی پارسی) ، بسیار بسیار جالب تر است.
شاه-شاعر افلاطون ، در حقیقت امر چیزی بیش از امثال خمینی و شاه نیست. " من به خال لبت ای دوست گرفتار شدم..."! 

مشاهده گر گمنام: بد نبود این مصرع را همراه با لب خندان "امام" و خالی بر لبش میدیدیم !

This is a great question :)

AO jaan, you are in good company, Plato had a huge problem with poets too. 

Can't read all the comments now but will be back.

Mash Ghasem's last few items are hilarious. 

Dear MG

Thank you for being fair and honest giving credit where due. My point was that Iranians have done this despite the IRI. It would have been a lot simpler with a better regime. No sanctions and minimal brain drain.

I agree to self criticsm and it is important to do an honest assessment ourselves. But it is possible to go overboard on anything. We Iranians have many faults but we are not all flaws. That is all I am trying to say here

LOL, HG jan

hamsadeh jan, I am guessing that you are a much better Hafez khan than me. I would be proud to be a good Hafez khan but I am not.

ایول مش قاسم،

ایول مش قاسم، یه قالی کرمان و یه کاسه پسته هم پهن کن با این بساط شراب و حشیش و کشک و دوغی که آوردی. این مشاهد ناشناس هم ساقی‌ بشه و آناهید حافظ خوانی کنه که گل اندر گل میشه.

Dear AO, you are a better writer than me

I have observed that  many Iranians are not aware when they are doing actions which is akin to biting the hands that feed them. Can you write about this one too?

But no, MG Jaan

AO, the relationship between discovery of ancient beer and Evin, reminds me of the relationship between Mr. Godarzy and Ms. Shaghayegh!

point being that while others were interested in our history (and not necessarily the beer which was a side discovery)--something that we should have been interested in-- we were preoccupied with building political prisons and perfecting our means of oppression.  

See, Mr. Goodarzy and Ms. Shaghayegh can be friends. I happened to know a Mr. Goodarzy...wait a minute...you don't mean...never mind... :-) 

Ashna, AO, VPK

Ashna jann, self mockery is very healthy. When a nation can't laugh at itself, then they have gotten their BIGGEST problem.

AO, the relationship between discovery of ancient beer and Evin, reminds me of the relationship between Mr. Godarzy and Ms. Shaghayegh!

VPK, as an avowoed, anti-monarchist as I am, a lot of credit for progress in IR's era goes directly back to Shah's era, since he in his gargantuan ambition had laid the basis for all these programs (not to mention getting laid by the gorgeous women of the land on regular basis!). Basically all IR had to do was to continue it. So, we ought to give credit to Shah for that. As Framarz says, too bad Shah had no plan B, just in case his plan A didn't work out!

Interesting tidbit

Godin Tapeh, where evidence of beer was discovered, was excavated by a Canadian team from 1965 to 1973:

//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godin_Tepe

Where was our own curiosity?  Incidentally, Evin prison was built in 1972.  What does that tell us about our culture?

//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evin_Prison

MG Khan

Do not forget:

• Tah Dig - my favorite.
• Fesenjoon - I mean the dish not the poster :-) It is a fine and very good dish.
• Aftabeh - I am working on an improved version fillable in a normal sink.

You see we have plenty of stuff. As for "real" achievements this may sound funny but it is not. IRI for all its very MANY problems has a real space program. You may laugh at it but how many nations are able to do that: 10.

Not bad for a nation with the highest brain drain; sanctions and a horrible regime. Iranian scientists in Iran did it DESPITE all of it.

Mash Ghasem -e gerami - you forgot the most important one

we invented, or at least perfected, beer:

 The earliest known chemical evidence of beer dates to circa 3500–3100 BC from the site of Godin Tepe in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran.[13] 

//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer

No problem Tiger :-)

Wait for my proof that Razi was really "Pre-Islamic" and showed up in a time machine! BTW this Mossad thing isn't working out. The pay is terrible and I get no benefits.

The biggest iranian achievement

So, you wanna know what have we Eroonian have accomplished in

the past few thousand years? My friend here's a short list of Iran's 'contributions' to the world civilization, not necessarily in order of significance:

1) The oldest Red Wine, everfound anywhere in the world. A clay container, with Red Wine within it, dating almost 3000 years,was found last year or so in Iranian Azarbyjan, making it the oldest Red wine of the world. So, we were probably the original Wions in the world.

2) Movign right along social pathologies, we were also the first nation to organize 'terrorist,' (back then they used to call them Assassins) cells in the world. According to some acccounts the  word Assasin is derived from Hashishion, which was what Hassan Khan Saabbaah gave his boys, to make'em courageous!

3) In the modern Era we have had the privilege of inventing Kashk.

4) And last but not least Doough is a world renownwed product of Iran. So much so we set THE INTERANTIONAL STANDARD IN THAT MONUMENTOUS FIELD.

What more do you need to feel sooooo proud of your national heritage?!?!?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

تازه ترين افتخار ايران ;تدوين استاندارد جهانى دوغ به ايران سپرده شد

انتخاب :رئيس سازمان استاندارد و تحقيقات صنعتى ايران از تدوين استاندارد جهانى دوغ توسط ايران خبر داده است.

نظام الدين برز گرى در آخرين اجلاسيه جهانى کدکس غذايى کشور هاى عضو
تدوين سه استاندارد جهانى دوغ، انار و يک استاندارد مربوط به محصولات
آرايشى و بهداشتى را به ايران سپردند.