If you still follow me you know that a while ago I talked here about one of my research projects (Attention Wiki) [Link to that Post]. I recently found out that Mohammad Keyhani (Attention Wiki’s Co-founder) has deleted my account and changed my role from co-founder to contributor in early stages

Mr. Keyhani has abused his administrative rights and deleted my account without my consent. I’ll start again as knowledge is for all and cyberspace has lots of corners and in the long run his actions are probably not that important. Mohammad Keyhani (also spelled kaihani) is obsessed with associating his name with what he calls the discipline of attention economy and will do anything to keep it to himself. pitiful. Only time will tell what strategy wins.

Link to Mohammad Keyhani’s English Blog

Link to Attention Wiki

screenshot of attention wiki main page on 3/22/2008:

Continuing my house-cleaning for the new year, I changed the theme of both of my blogs today. I have also decided to change the content and general direction of both of them. Normally I whined about how-awful-iran-is in my Farsi blog and wrote about other stuff in here. I think a reversal of roles may be productive.

Iran is bit of a mysterious country and I think providing an insider look into it’s culture and social context may be useful. Also, writing about the outside world in Farsi is also productive as the Iranian community and especially those living in Iran are semi detached from the outside world.

Still, I will sometimes jump back and forth and deviate from this presented plan.

Hope it works out.

I’ll cut to the chase. I’ve made something new!

A Collaborative English-Farsi Word-set (to become a dictionary someday…) 

You can find more details about it here (English) & here (Farsi). You can Access it here.

Parviz Tanavali is one of the most respected Iranian Artists and probably the last living legend in the rather empty hall of fame of Iranian Sculptors. A few Month ago one of his sculptures titled “ْGrowth” (رويش in Farsi) was removed from Iranian embassy’s front-yard in Paris and then destroyed. (News Source in Farsi) To me, as well as many, these tragedies are unbearable especially in this time of artistic depression in Iran.

I think to myself what did the embassy workers thought when they were removing the sculpture. They probably thought to themselves that it’s just a piece of decoration. Interestingly these people think of a religious object as sacred and would not touch it without washing their hands and faces (the practice of Vozu in Islam) first.

The last couple of days, I have been reading a magnificent book, namely “Adventures of a bystander” by Peter F. Drucker (amazon) (publisher). The fame of Mr. Drucker is by no means unknown in the realm of management science but what is interesting in this work of art ,as I see it, is the meaning it brings to a quote from another scholar, Soren Kierkegaard.

Kierkegaard said “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

The problem with that sentence is that it is often too late to live when you finally understand life. Being an optimist I think most people understand what life “means” much sooner than their days of old but even then the lost time is lost forever. Let’s face it you are never 19 twice.

That is exactly my rationale in designating Drucker’s book as magnificent. Drucker was an influential man and much of his “influentiality”, he owed to knowing many many key figures from government officials to university professors to SS officers. Reading his book gives insight in how choosing one path in life over another affects the fate of that person. How it makes some thrive and others fail. That, in my opinion, is a must have but expensive knowledge.

I never even imagined that one day I follow a career to become a teacher, let alone it becoming my dream in life.

Yes, I want to be a university professor. That does not exactly mean teaching but teaching is an inseparable part of being an academic.

When I was little, I always liked to be a commercial pilot. For some reason, in my naivety as a child, I thought a pilot was superior to all other professionals.

That belief probably originated because pilots were the boss of the sky. They are not, but kids don not understand the many complexities in the society. That is probably why we call them both naive and creative.

Now that I think of it, I am choosing the Academic track because of the very same reasons that the then kiddo selected Aviation. University professors have no evident boss. They are the boss of the classroom and hold a very powerful tool, namely the final exam.

But I am not going to be that kind of professor. I am choosing academia because there are possibilities to be explored. Discoveries to be made. And beliefs in the conventional wisdom that call to be refuted.

In that, I lay my heart.

He has a weblog in 4 languages!!! and you can post comments too! give it a try:

 Ahmadinejad Weblog in English

The Persian (Farsi) version has less contraversial comments. Comments are mostly from 12 year old kids who ,if real, must have heard about it from their teachers whom ,I can imagine, had orders to popularize it. The website is filled with puffery and empty comments about “Government”, “freedom” and other things. I doubt if he ever even reads the stuff.

I won’t comment on this one more. I still prefer to keep my head on those shoulders.