I guess that must be your handwriting, that I found on a plastic envelope containing EtBr stained agarose-gels. I asked a friend at the Avicenna Bookstore here in Munich, to translate it into Persian, and she proposed that "24 wells" is " 24 خوب ".
If the date is right, than they were lying in the cool-room since two and half years. I thought to give them a trial electrophoresis with some fresh DNA samples we had for sequencing. And what a miracle: they are still giving excellent DNA patters. It must be your angel fingers while casting the gels that made them last forever.
Take Care my Dear Michael
----------------------------------------------------------------- Hello Michael, Yes this is my handwriting! So the gels are still there? Your friends translation was a bit misleading. She obviously just used a dictonary. "well" is "khob - خوب" yes its correct. but in english well is good and also what we use it in gels (like a slot or a hole. so "khob" means "good", but not "hole". And "24" in persian would be ۲۴ Don't forget, Persia was once leading in Mathematics, with men such as Al-Khwarizmi or Omar Khayyam. If you want to practise more, you can go here. So far, Take Care. Ghazal
Hello, my name is Nofretete, and I was born in Luxor in Egypt. 1912 some archeologists recovered me from this dark grave in the earth and brought me back to light. I, who together with my beloved husband Echnaton were so much fascinated by the divine nature of the sun had to spend 3400 years in the dark. When I was recovered and brought to Berlin, this not only caused a real Egyptomania and Nofretete-cult amongst the ordinary people, but the sun itself started to shine brighter and stronger for happiness to have me back.
The Egyptians were always afraid of my beauty. 3400 years ago they hated my preference of the sun against all the single, little minor gods they were worshipping. Thats why they banned my statue and burried me deep under ground. After the German archeologists under Ludwig Borchardt excavated me 100 years ago in the meter deep dust in Amarna, and brought me back to sunshine, the Egyption authorities several times attempted to get hold of me. They ordered reviews from French lawyers that should proof how the Germans had violated a contract with Egypt and insidiously betrayed them by highjacking me to Berlin. I have to admit, that my escape from Egypt to Berlin did not happened against my own will: Without exchanging words, both Borchardt and myself understood that the Berlin New Museum would provide a more adequate place for me than an Egyptian dust bin. We were afraid that in Egypt, they again would try to hide my beauty from the public views. Now, 2012, 100 years after my rebirth, they introduce in Egypt the Sharia, ordering every woman to hide her face and her beauty. In Egypt, wouldn't they put me under a hijab or a burka, before showing me to the public ? Or will the Salafists who occupied a couple of parlament seats and some governmental posts attack me altogether, destroy me as they did with other statues in Afghanistan and in Mali, because they fear that people will worship my beauty ? In Berlin in the New Museum, people from all over the world come only to see me, and yes, they worship my beauty. They like me, and I like them, and therefore I will stay in Berlin forever. I am nobodies property, I belong to the entire mankind. But in Berlin they toke always care of me, and they will do so forever. During the bombings of the 2. world war, when the city was turned into a ruin field, they found a saver shelter for me somewhere far away in a mountain village. They were so intrigued by Nofretete, that the emperor Wilhelm II and the East-Germans (who lost me to West-Berlin) both ordered identical copies of myself. I am nobodies property, not the Germans and not the Egyptians. But I am and will stay a Berliner. The local people call me a "Berliner Göre", and although this sounds turkish, it is their slang for "naughty little girl". Although this of course is a (typical Berlin) understatement of my beauty, I can life with it.
Many times Tolstojs novel "Anna Karenina" was brought on the cinema screens, by not so famous film directors, but with actresses who after playing the leading character became movie stars (or were movie stars before already). Sophie Marceau, Jacqueline Bisset, Vivien Leigh and of course Greta Garbo. And now, we have the pleasure to enjoy a more modern Anna Karenina, using state-of-the-art 21st century cinematografic techniques. One of the most intriguing moments in the 1935 movie with Greta Garbo shows her arrival by train in Moscow, when she arises through a steam-cloud and leaves Wronski, who came to the train station only to meet his mother, breathless.
Before I consider to see the new movie (staring Keira Knightly as Anna and Jude Law as Mr. Karenin and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Wronski), I first want to see how the train station scene has been set up. If this scene is weak, or a disappointment as compared to Greta Garbos one, I wont see the entire movie.
I was looking for a colleagues work on cancer stem cells today in the internet. Found out that she now works at the David Geffen Medical School of UCLA. I got curious, since I red the name David Geffen already at a research institute in Tel Aviv. So this is what David Geffen, of whom I hardly knew anything untill today, did in his life (apart from founding some of the top centers of biomedical research). He was born in 1943 as son of a poor tailors family, jewish emigrants from Europe who settled in Brooklyn. Young David attended a couple of colleges but always dropped out before graduation. When he seeked for a job in the then booming music- and entertainment industry, he falsified a letter that wrongly proofed that he graduated from UCLA (hic! This might be the reason for his later generosity in funding the UCLA David Geffen Medical School). This "degree" from UCLA now opened him the career at WMA, where big movie stars such as Chaplin, Clark Gable, Catherine Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe and music stars such as the Rolling stones, Beach Boys, Sonny & Cher were under contract. Later he began his own artists agency and the record label Asylum Records, where he was influential to the success of Crosby, Stills and Nash, Jackson Browne and promoted the career of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits, The Eagles and others. His next record company, Geffen Records, produced Donna Summer, Neil Young, Aerosmith, Peter Gabriel, Nirvana, John Lennon, Yoko Ono and many others. In the 80s, Geffen founded his own movie production and distribution company Geffen Pictures. It produced little gems of cinematography such as "Little Shop of Horrors", "Risky Business", "Beetlejuice", "After Hours", "Men Don't Leave", "M.Butterfly", "Interview with the Vampire", "The Butcher Boy", and (my alltime favorite): "Beavis and Butthead do America". From the money he made here, he co-funded Broadway musicals such as Dreamgirls and Cats. To make clear that Geffen was not simply the lucky guy to discovered a gold-mine for himself (in particular when together with Spielberg and J.Katzenberg he founded DreamWorks Studios), consider where he spend much of his income. He donated large parts of his wealth to organize the UCLA theater Geffen Playhouse. Millioans of $ went to Bill Clintons and Barack Obamas election campaigns and to stop the homo-phobic Proposition 8 in the Californian constituition. His most eminent donations, I think, went to medical research. His 200 mill gift to UCLA to found the medical school was the largest ever privat donation to medical schools in the US.
So I wrote this not to show another typical cases of the american dream to rise from rags to riches. Geffen was not seeking for the quick success and low-risk investments. He was always following a vision. He had an idea that came to him before it became common sense. This might be a common character among the Jews, that its better to sit down and make up your mind and don't go the easy track, but follow your own intention. I think because Jews over the centuries were so often discriminated from starting the easy careers (in gouvernmental administration, academia, army, owning agricultural ground), they developed already very early the skills of converting "crazy" ideas into the business of the future. But when I said in my early comments above that they not always acted like philantrops, at least there was one big-business where Jews were under-represented: arms production. The entertainment industry and careers in academia obviously absorbed so many of them, that no Jews were left to work in the weapon industry. No point to be ashamed of, I would say.
(A debate on the jewish philantrophy with Bahmani is here)
Ghazal my Dear, Two month ago, in September 2012 Israel seemed to be the most relaxed and calm country one could imagine. Except for very rare security checks at the entrances of large shopping malls, concert halls or the Jad Vashem museum, there were hardly any signs of the immanent threat of violent attacks. As travelers we were more concerned about the possible failure of the air-conditioning in our flat, or about the trouble to release our car from the car-park that was suddenly locked on Sabbath. In an attempt to dissociate myself as far as possible from the tourists (many of whom visit Israel for its christian heir or because they come on a cruise with a one-day break in Haifa) I was lurking around Lev Hamifratz Shopping Mall. There, a memorial plate told that during construction of the mall in 1991 it had been hit by a scud missile launched by the lunatic Saddam Hussein. Some years later an attempted car bombing attack by the Libanese Hisbollah was prevented by police that sapped the vehicle on the car-park outside the building. This suddenly reminded me of an ever-present, albeit latent danger for life or injury in Israel, and this might to a certain degree prompted me to decline to the invitation by the Magen David Adom (the Israeli equivalent to the Red Cross) to donate blood right there at the shopping mall.
I never donated blood before, except when it was recommended before a surgery in hospital. When I laid down on this rubber-covered bed I had some time to talk to the doctor and the nurse about the most likely occasion when my blood (of course processed and perhaps mixed with a lot of Israeli blood to dilute out the Goi-factors) was used for transfusion. Anything could happen in Israel like anywhere else: car accidents, surgical operations with sudden complications, caesarian sections. The prospect of a military conflict was rather unlikely, two month ago.
Now, after Israel started its counter-attack to protect its people from the Gaza-launched rockets, it appears that victims of air-strikes, bombs or rockets blowing living-houses will be more likely to be in need of blood-transfusions. If my blood finds a way out of the deep-freeze storage into the circulation system of a patient, it could be a civilian who's house in Ashkelon or Ofakim or even in the suburbs of Tel Aviv were hit by Hamas rockets. It could be an IDF soldier who is about to enter Gaza in an attempt to neutralize the terrorists of Hamas. But most likely, it will be an innocent person living in Gaza, who has been misused by the terrorists as a living shield, who finally is be the most vulnerable and least cared-for victim. Israels IDF recently circulated a Twitter news promising that it will open the Gaza check points to permit delivery of emergency medical goods, maybe including my blood.
When I donated blood in September in Haifa, I had to fill in the form below, and of course without understand much hebrew I simply followed the suggestions of the Magen David Adom nurse and clicked any field she recommended to me. I did not asked her, if any of these fields to fill in were refering to the intended usage of my blood. Did it possibly exluded its use during military operations ? Or for certain minorities ? Or could it even be that non-kosher blood from a Goi like me would only be used to rescue non-Jewish victims ? Everything is possible, but I hope in the case of life emergency, people forget about race, nation, faith, and give the blood to those who need it most.
I'm wondering how everything would change, if I could really see you every day, like it was two years ago. If we could go out for a walk through Pompej every night, Or sit next to each other in every new movie that comes to the cinema. If we could climb up to the TV tower not only once, but do it every sunny day, and watch the crazy world beneath our feets. Would you still like the black bracelet, if we would go to the little jewelery store in Vietri once every week ? And would the bone-fire on the riverbank still warm our skin and my soul, if we would have it every fullmoon night, and not only once in August 2010 ? And if IKEA would see us as frequent customers, not just once as passers by, would I still be this attentive student of the Swedish language there ? And if we would drive to Carefours supermarket every day after sunset, would the elder Italian lady behind the counter ask us again and again, what we have to do with each other, this enchanting young girl and the elder man? This meteor that stood still for 3 seconds when we saw it, it would not follow the same track again, even if we would go out to observe the Perseides each year. The magic of the moments wont come again, even if we try to repeat the same set-up, hoping that we will experience again what was wunderful before, we will find that the world cannot be copied and pasted. The moments with you that turned my life into a rush, and filled the air with the scent of eternity, wont come again. But there will be countless more occasions filled with magic and excitement. But because these moments will be rare, my Dear, painfully separated by long periods of separation, they will always give us this sensation of a never before and never again.
Hi Michael, Our walk through the ruins of Pompej during the Vietri-sul-Mare meeting, that finally had us loosing our way at night, and "being rescued" by this old Italian gentleman who gave us this very special guided tour with a torch-lamp, let me speculate if this glamourous roman population that lived there untill the year 79 ever had a second life after they all died and their house were buried in lava and ashes from the Vesuv volcano.
I found this video from the James Bond 007 film "You Only Live Twice", and therein are scenes showing the flood of lava. Maybe we, two visitors of the 21st century on their lonely walk through Pompeji, exactly 1933 years after the big catastrophy, were reincarnations of two of the victims of the eruption.
Ghazal Dear, the moon tried to hide tonight, just like you. It took me the whole night through to shift away the clouds, so it only became visible in the early morning.
I always find it strange, that the moon is neutrum in English. In German the Moon is a male word. In many latin and slavic languages, Moon is female. How is it in Swedish and in Persian ?
Dear Michael, you wrote some articles here at your blog and at Iranian.com about the modern Iranian cinematography. I'd like to add a movie by the young Iranian filmmaker Maryam Kesharvarz onto your list , called "Circumstances" ("Sharayet" in its persian original).
I saw it recently with friends who got it on DVD, since it is not yet shown in the movie-theaters in Sweden. The movie is about two girls who go to University and are like sisters in mind. The parents of Shirin, the more quiet of the two, were obviously killed by the regime for participating in political opposition. The family of Atafeh, however, is very well situated and rich, although not conformist. A brother of Atafeh, in the past supposed to start a career as musician, returns from a long absence and makes a completely brain-washed impression. Still loved by his mother and dad, he is depressed and drug addicted and finally only sees a way out his mental problems by devoting his life to Allah and becoming a servant of the regime. The main person of the movie, however, are the two girls Shirin and Atafeh, who are both full of dreams of a career as singers, in a liberal and free society. This clashes with both the opressive political regime in Iran, with the dogmatic situation at the college, but brings them also in conflict with Atafehs well positioned family. In one scene of the movie, during a family celebration where usually everybody contributes a song on the piano, Atafehs brother insist that the girls should not perform any more, since he considers this as anti-islamic. Trying to avoid any conflict, her family declines to the brothers hypocrism and recommends their daughter to stay silent. Atafeh and Shirin look for freedom of thoughts and more wild experiences by joining the Tehran party scene. When one of these illegal parties is raided by the regimes Basidj thugs, they both get arrested. Whereas Atafehs parents manage to bribe some of the police officers to get their daughter out, Shirin is kept for longer in custody and she is mentally tortured there. Atafehs depressive brother suddenly appears to work for the police. When he finds Shirin he offers her to work for her release, but only if she agrees to marry her. Throughout the entire film, however, it is obvious that Shirin and Atafeh are more than just friends, they are connected by a deep, mutual love. This love between the two girls is the source of all their strength, of their endless confidence that a better and free life will come and they will start a great music career together somewhere abroad. The film finishes undecided, without happy end. At one moment, Shirin declines to the possessory claims by her husband, Shirins brother. But it is clear that she is only suffering here. The unconditional love between the two girls serves as the big contrast to a society which is driven by anxiety, lies and hate. When Shirin and Atafeh are together, their honesty and love is like a glance into a better future of the country.
And this is what I red in the UK newspaper Guardian about this marvellous movie:
"Circumstance's strength is in the exuberance of Atafeh and Shireen, filled with adolescent fantasies of escape (and cringeworthy lad's mag-style fantasies of each other: all matching underwear and high heels) and their rebellious rush to dance, drink and break rules. At times the sensuous hair-flicking and the way the camera lingers on their beauty feels overdone and their interest in liberalism seems to extend only to their right to party. But the film frames their insistence on following their desires, whatever the consequences, as a powerful form of dissent; Atafeh tells a friend: "Here anything illegal becomes politically subversive." Set immediately before the protests of the Green movement swept through Iran, the film aims to show where the anger behind the demonstrations came from. "In Iran where the state controls your behaviour … they want you to dress a certain way, and not speak to people of the opposite sex in the street – of course the personal is political," explains Keshavarz, "in a more explicit way than anywhere else.""
Hi Michael, I was happy to hear that the EU is not only very generous in finacially supporting our life-science research and keep our genetic and mutagenesis projects running, but they at the end also became aware of the human rights situation in Iran. They gave this years "Andrej Sakharaov Price for Freedom of Thought" to two Iranians who are imprissoned for their continous fight for intellectual freedom and against political oppression: film director Jafar Panahi and the lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh. It was an important message by the Europeans, since many politically active Iranians were disillusioned by the West for its hypocrisis when it comes to Iran. The oppression of the Iranian people was often considered a minor issue for the West, who was more concerned Irans nuclear program.
Day 0, Travel to Jerusalem (and keep your passport clean from any trace of the "zionost entity") Day 1: Wet hijab day at Banana beach, Tel AvivDay 2: "yes, Mame, me and Shlomo are sitting here on an ice-cream; I promise ..."Day 3: Sunset on Tel Aviv Beach, the Big OrangeDay 4: Jaffa Cafe: Delicious Menue Day 5: Tel Aviv: Russian Immigrant is doing Sewage Fishing on Tel Avivs Carmel MarketDay 6: Jaffa: In addition to the many beautiful Arab girls, there are also very enchanting Jewish ones, like the one next to me (dont try to date her, since she is my wife now)Day 7: Jerusalem, YMCA Guesthouse : In the tradition of the crusaders - but after adopting a more tolerant policy they also serve non-gay customers nowadays.Day 8: Marmilla Street near Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem: Each stone tells a story.Day 9: Jerusalem: Gentlemen prefer blond (at least here, where it is still considered something exotic)Day 10: Old town Jerusalem: Bargaining for the price of grapes.Day 11: Old town Jerusalem: Cooling down the mood with some icecream.Day 12: Jerusalem, Church of Sepulchre: For those who believe in it, this red stone plate on which Jesus was layed down after his death, can do miracles. I tested it with my mobile phone, and indeed it got fully recharged after placing it there for just one minute. Day 13: Jerusalem/Al Kuds: School is out in the Arab quarterDay 14: Jerusalem: Goes together very well: Tasty Taybeh beer from Palestine and genetically modified Cherry-Tomatoes from Israel Day 15: Jerusalem/Al Kuds: Sabbath at western wall.Day 16: Qumran / Death Sea: The dream of many young folks: Exodus to South AmericaDay 17: En Gedi / Death Sea: Taking a refreshing bath where King Solomon met Suleika. Day 18: Death Sea Shore: Baywatch at 42 degrees.Day 19: Haifa / Bahai Garden: Members only (unless you fit through this fence) Day 20: Haifa / Alenby street: Kosher rubbish bins: left one for milky products, righ one for fleshy products.Day 21: Haifa / Allenby street: The Sadam Hussein memorial shelters.Day 22: Jerusalem / Al Kuds: Western Wall, Mount Muriah, Dom of Rock at the beginning of Sabbath. Day 23: Jad Vashem: The Tree to honour Oskar Schindler.Day 24: Jerusalem/Al Kuds: Top Soccer Players. Arab boys build their playground on the roofs of christian or jewish houses.Day 25: Tel Aviv / Hayarkon Park: Red Hot Chilly Peppers concertDay 1 after returning home: Reading Saul Bellows "To Jerusalem and return" and trying to understand how much I missed and why I should come back.
