Gas Rationing in Iran

A few days ago I came back from a four week trip to Iran. The weather was wonderful, as usual. But many other things are out of order.

Quite recently, the government decided to ration petrol. A private car gets around 3 liters of petrol a day, a taxi 30 liters, and so on. In fact rationing the petrol is not such a bad idea since it is subsidized by the tax money. Iran buys petrol from outside and sells it cheap at the petrol stations. Apparenly, many people in the border states of Iran used to buy a lot of subsidized petrol and sell it in the neighbouring countries and making a lot of money. These people are out of business right now.

Another group of people that are out of business right now are the taxi drivers who used to use their private cars as taxi. This group can be divided into two sub-groups: 1) the unregistered drivers, 2) the drivers who operated through a so called "agent" (âzhâns). They are all out of jobs, unless they somehow manage to buy petrol at the "market price" (about 400% more expensive compared to the subsidized price).

Given the fact that petrol in Iran is subsidized and the air pollution in many big cities is a major problem, petrol rationing is a positive action. At the same time, however, the government needs to increase the availability of the public transport system and drastically improve the quality of such services. In many cities where the private taxis were an important part of the transporation system, there is no public transport available to replace all the âzhâns taxis that can not operate anymore. People are not so happy.

Finally, rationing anything in Iran opens a new black market for the rationed goods and new actors enter the market and start earning loads of black/grey money. One taxi driver told me that his friend had sold his ration for the month of Mordâd (around 900 litres of bensin) for 300000 Tumans.

Once upon a time, the foreign currency was rationed in Iran. Twenty years ago there were two different rates of exchange for the American Dollar, for example. The market price was about 300% more than the rate at the bank. Nowadays, you can buy as much Dollar as you can afford both at the bank and at the black market and the rate of exchange of the banks in Iran and the black market is almost the same. Maybe, the same will apply to the price of petrol sooner or later. However, since the cost of transportation usually has a direct impact on the rate of inflation, it would be wise to avoid market prices for the petrol. A 100% increase in price of petrol (or gas) could probably increase the general inflation by more than 5% and increase the pressure on a rather stretched patience.

Rate of Exchange in Iran

The rate of exchange for the dollar in Iran is currently 9200 Rials for a dollar. When I left Iran it was 70 Rials for a dollar. Still, considering the state of the economy, the dollar is cheap. A more reasonable rate of exchange seems to be 30000 rials for a dollar. Naturally, I am speculating a bit without giving well-founded reasons. But considering that the rate of inflation is more than 25%, my speculation does not seem to be far from reality. The price of housing seems to double every 18 months (a kind of Iranian Moore's law) and that is a good indication that things are not quite right.

Despite the high inflation for many years, the rate of foreign currencies seem to change in a surprisingly well-bahaved fashion. This is very uncomfortable for anyone holding large sums in Rial. However, relatively high interest rates for savings ensures that people keep their money in Rial.

The economy seems to be partially under the control of the government and mainly under the rule of a market economy. There is a clear conflict between these two forces. Meanwhile, the rich seem to get richer and the poor seem to lose more and more of their buying power.

Sooner or later the currency should be allowed to float. Then, it will not take a long time before we see 30000 Rials = $1.

Finally, if you happen to have all your savings in Rial, do not panik, I am not an expert in economy. But the expert investor should balance the level of greed and risk.

Souls and Algorithms

There is very little known about our souls. Apparently it doesn't weigh anything. However, if you put a soul in a body then this weightless thing start functioning.

Consider the following computer program.

(define flipflop
  (let ((state 0))
     (lambda ()
        (set! state (- 1 state))
        state)))

This program is written in a computer language called Scheme. It returns a 1 and then a 0 and then a 1 and so on. What is interesting about this program is that it doesn't weigh anything. And if you put it in the right place in the computer, then it can do what it is meant to do. Interesting similarity!

Identity and Object III

If we enlarge the world by a factor och 1000000000000000 (or 10 to the power of 15) then you can see the smallest objects we know of. In fact you would see nothing other than these small objects (let's call them Q:s). You would see your computer screen as a bunch of organized Q:s, your finger will consist of another bunch of Q:s and so on.

Can you imagine such a view? If you can, then try to answer these questions:

- What does our usual notion of objects mean in such a world?

- When someone dies, what happens to the Q:s that form that person. Do all the Q:s survive? Where do they end up?

There are a lot of interesting questions that pop up in one's mind, and why don't I just leave it there.

Identity and Object II

After a short discussion the other day, my friend Shanai found the following links which contain very interesting material on the topic I posted on Identity and Object.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_%28philosophy%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

There is really no clear definition of identity and object, that is why I am so interested in the topic. It is also related to some other stuff which I'll write about later.

So, as you'll find out from the above links, the issue I raised in my earlier posting is a very old one. And still worth thinking about.

Identity and Object

Here is a philosophical problem concerning objects and identity:

Imagine you have bought a new car and visit me at my house. When you come inside you move to the window and point at your car and say "that is my new car". After coming to the window and appreciating the beauty of your car, I invite you to the kitchen where we sit down and eat and chat for three hours.

During these three hours, some philosophers who also happen to be good mechanics replace every single piece of your car with an exactly identical piece. The only piece they choose not to replace is the locking system so your switch would still work.

You leave after coffee and sit in your car, start it and drive away. While you are driving, one of the philosophers calls you and tells you about what they have done to your poor new car. Some questions pop up naturally: Is that really your car? If your answer is "yes" then "why do you think so?". If not, where is your car now?

Incidently, I lied about the locking system. In fact they even replaced the locking system with an exactly identical one.

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Well, i haven't been writing for sometime so it had to be something crazy. I may extend this posting in future.

[DRAFT] Countries and Nations [IN PROGRESS]

When someone asks you "Where are you from?", you don't think twice before delivering the right answer, or some answer. There seems to be some generally accepted names that are reasonable answers to this question. We are in principle answering the question "Which officially recognized country are you from?". Many years ago if someone had told you that she is from Bosnia, you would have probably gone further and asked her more questions eventually forcing her to admit that she is from Yugoslavia. At that particular point in time there weren't so many people in the world that knew where Bosnia was.

Today, Bosnia is a recognized country and few people question that fact. Whatever that glued Bosnia to the old Yugoslavia is not there anymore and the chances for going back to the old times is definitely zero. Creation of Bosnia (which I am using as an example) was not cheap. Many lives were lost, many were raped, and many got tortured, many family stuctures were torn apart, and many many more lost their homes. Whether the whole thing was worth it or not could be seen from different angles. Some of those who lost their dear ones may think the price was too high and some others would think it was worth the cost on the whole. However, future generations who never saw any of the mess would never think about these questions. For them there will be a Bosnia and some old stories about some heros and some butchers.

Yugoslavia was a concept that lost its meaning. Borders and geographic names are conventions and regulations that change. To see the change you need to see things from the right perpective. The question always is what this right perspective is. Sometimes the right perspective is selection of the right granularity of time, centuries, years, months, and so on. Some other times taking the right perspective means selection of the right granularity in some other cooridinate. That is all I want to say about the right perspective at this moment.

Let´s go back to the nationality issue. Consider me for example. I was born in Qorve (also written as Ghorveh), a small town in Kurdistan, Iran. My mother is originally from the city of Bijar (also in Kurdistan, Iran) and her mother tongue is Persian. My father is originally from Qorve and his mother tongue is Turkish (that is, a Turkish speaking Iranian not a Turkish speaker from Turkey). Until a few years ago most of the people in Qorve spoke Turkish and we did the same at home. So my mother tongue is Turkish. I am thereby related to Persians, Turks and Kurds. I learned Turkish at home and Kurdish when playing with other kids and also working in my father's radio and electronics shop which had many Kurdish customers from the villages around Qorve. Although my mother's mother tongue was Persian she never spoke Persian to us. We learned Persian at school just like many other kids in Iran.

So looking at things from a rather abstract point of view, I am half Persian and half Turkish. But is that really the case? How do I know that my mother is 100% Persian or my father 100% Turkish? I don't. For most of the population of Iran (and for that matter, the world) it is hard to trace back more than a few hundred years. And most important of all: do I feel half Persian? Or half Turkish? Or is it 50% Turkish, 40% Persian and 10% Kurdish? Or is it another distribution of the percentages?

Just to make things a bit more interesting or complicated, take into account the fact that I have lived most of my life in Sweden. How much of me is Swedish? What about my kid who are born in Sweden?

Clearly, the concept of a country seems to be subject to international agreements and treaties. And the list of countries is subject to slow but constant change. The number of countries in the world has been increasing for some time now and this will probably continue for some decades. The efforts of most governments in the world is to try to create a one-to-one correspondence between the concept of a country and its nation. This is usually called the "nation building process". For example, in such a process, the Russian speakers of Latvia become good Latvians, the Serbs of Croatia become good Croatians and the Kurds of Iraq good Iraqi citizens.

Not so many people seem to know how this process of nation building should look like. Even some of the most democratic countries of the world seem to suffer from the lack of knowledge how this should be done. United Kingdom, for example, with its long history, is nothing more. These kindoms apparently never became really one. And if the EU was not created, probably Wales and Scotland would have become independent countries.

But what does the word nation mean. Here are some candidate definitions:

• People that live in a geographically well-defined part of the world, internationally recognized as a country: for example, Welsh, French. But what about Palestinians? They don´t live in a well-defined part of the world.
  
  
• People with a common language: But that is not enough. Just consider Brazil (Portugese) and Portugal (Portugese), or England (English), Australia (English), USA (English).
  
  
• People with a common religion: Well that won't work.
  
  
• People that are born in a geographically well-defined part of the world that is recognised as a country: This definition on its own doesn´t seem to be sufficient, but it does capture quite a bit of the truth.
  
  
• People with a common past: How far away in time do we mean? If we go far back to the beginnings, then we would all belong to the same nation. It is not such a bad idea, but it is not a practical definition.
  
  
• People with a common future: Do we have the same future? This depends on the perspective we take. We could argue that we all live on Earth and there is no reason to believe that a substantial number of the Earth population will leave Earth and live somewhere else, so at the end we all have the same destiny. So again, we are all members of the same nation with a shared future, however, this is not a practical definition either and therefore irrelevant in today´s world.
  
  
• People who feel they are members of a particular nationality: This sounds like a promising definition. I can not say anything negative about this.
  
  
• ...
  

So, I am going to adopt the last definition I just gave. That is, you are of the nationality that you care about. If you think you are American, then you are American. If you feel you are a French speaking Canadian, then you are indeed a French speaking Canadian and should not be mistaken as a French. If you are an Egyptian who moved to the USA and feels both Egyption and American, then you have double nationality and nobody can take that feeling from you.

So, nationality, just like religion is a personal thing.

To Myself

So, it has been a year since I wrote last time. Aren't we lazy!

Wake up kid. Do you want a blog or not?

Yuxare Mahla

Taqriban har shahra ke gedmisham evlar yâ yerlari ke shahr icenna va üja yerdeymish uberé yerlardan gerantaremish. Valé Qurva yuxâre mahlasenna yer o ev âyre yerlardan arzântarde. Hatman dalile vâr, valé man dalilen bilmiram. Dar har hâl agar bir gun Qurva da yer âlam Yuxâre Mahlada âllam. Râssen issiyay man Yuxare Mahlada dünyaya galdem. Shâyad una görade. Issiram gidam eva.

Snow

It has been snowing for almost ten days in our town in Sweden. I think snow is fantastic and I can not imagine a winter without it. I will be lost. I wouldn't know what to do. Even in my small hometown in Iran we had a lot of snow during the winter.

Snow is probably a present for lighting up the dark days and nights of winter. Whatever the reason, there is only one thing to do. When this soft blanket covers the garden, our homes and the mountains then it is time to play.

One more thing: have you ever seen a snowflake? Of course. But have you seen it under a microscope? Probably not. Neither have I. Anyway, snow cristals are at least as fantastic and beautiful as a snowy day.

Orkut

A while back a friend of mine asked me whether I like to join this new community site Orkut. At the time I wasn't interested but a few weeks ago my niece invited me to Orkut. I joined and since then I have succeeded to establish links with some of my family members and also some acquaintances that I never imagined I will meet in my life. I suppose all this is just positive.

Internet is a nice place for meeting and communicating. At the same time there are so many that misuse the possibilities of the Intenet. Unfortunately there is nothing we can do about that. When we put our pictures and information on the net, we are taking a slight risk. We should not forget that!

Orkut, with that little space for our little pictures, seems to provide something that many find interesting. It has many disadvantages as well since we do not know how the information on this site will be used and by who. But we can not be that pessimistic.

A Minor Breakfast Problem

My favorite breakfast consists of white feta cheese, Persian cherry jam (morabba ye âlbâlu) and a fine cup of tea. The best cherry jam I remember from my younger days are obviously my mother's. Also when I studied in Tehran I occasionally had the pleasure of tasting the cherry jam made by our dear relative Sorur khanum.

Anyway, I have been away from all that luxury for such a long time and I simply have to accept the cherry jam made by the Iranian food company 1 + 1 (Yek o Yek). Every now and then we go to some oriental (Middle Eastern) corner shop and the first thing I put in the shopping basket is a jar of cherry jam.

Unfortunately, every time I buy a jar of Yek o Yek, there is something that disappoints me. Sometimes it is the taste which is not as good as it should be, sometimes it is the consistency and worst of all the few seeds one can still find in the jam. Many times I have been so close to breaking my teeth. I don't really understand what the problem is. Is it so difficult for such a company to get rid of the cherry seeds?

Dear 1+1, please take out the seeds. I have taken good care of my teeth all my life and have no interest in loosing them. Thank you!

An Angel

A beautiful angel encouraged me to write more.
I said I would.

Keep Your ID Safe

For my private email-communication I used to use a Yahoo account. Well, at least until recently. Something terrible happened to my Yahoo account. Someone stole it.

[How someone hijacked my Yahoo-account]

A few days ago while working at home I got an email from someone. This person had written something like this: "Jalal joon, I liked the picture of you on http://www...com/jalal... and I liked it very much". I was very surprised and wanted to know what this picture was. I clicked on the link and was lead to another (apparently) Yahoo page that asked for my ID and password. I felt that the situation was quite abnormal but even though, without thinking so much, I typed my Yahoo ID and password. I was then lead to some Yahoo group that had nothing to do with the subject of the email I had received. I deleted the email and logged out without realizing the seriousness of the situation.


The next morning I went to work. On my computer at work, I always keep many browser windows open as a reminder of the pages I am currently looking at and I usually do not log out (I do however make sure that others do not have access to my computer). Anyway, after reading my emails on my university account, I opened a new browser window typed www.yahoo.com and tried to login to my Yahoo-account. I couldn't log in. There was something wrong. My password was not valid anymore. I noticed, however, that another browser window from the day before was connected to my Yahoo-account. I opened it and realised that I could still read my emails from that account.

I saw that the most recent emails on my account were from my Internet service provider. These emails were answers to a password alteration request. I started realising what was going on. Someone had got hold of my Yahoo account and was trying to get hold of the domain names that I own. After trying for a few hours I managed to talk to someone that worked at the company where I keep my domain name accounts. They were very helpful and performed a brief analysis and started believing in my story and restored my account. I had managed to save my domain names before the intruder had had the opportunity to transfer them to another account.

Unfortunately, I couldn't communicate with Yahoo concerning my ID. The only help I got from Yahoo were some predefined online FAQ-pages that did not include my case. The details of my Yahoo-account had changed and there was no way the automatic help system could relate me to my Yahoo-ID. There is not a single telephone number on Yahoo that one can call to get help. It is probably too much service to expect from a free-service. For the time being it looks as if my Yahoo-account is gone forever. I have been lured.

[I could have avoided this]

Clicking on a link is not dangerous. You should however be more careful when you are requested to fill forms and provide information about yourself. In my case, after clicking the link which was included in the email, I got to a page that looked like a Yahoo-page but in fact it was not. If I had simply looked at the address line in my browser I would have noticed that it is a joker that is asking me for my ID and not yahoo. I am very disappointed in myself. For God sake I am a computer programmer myself and can write similar programs if I want to, how could I be fooled so!?

[Be Careful]

You can not imagine how much more careful I am after this incident. I delete every strange email immediately and do not open any attached files that I have not requested. It does not matter who the sender is. Internet is for sharing and communication, but it is scary too. Sooner or later someone will be prepared to spend some time to bother you somehow. This is the price we have to pay in order to keep the good things about the Internet.


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Coffee

Did you know that people who grow coffee only receive 1% of the money you pay for a cup of coffee?

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eFarsi: Writing Persian With Latin Letters

When my daughter was a few years old, I started collecting some Persian children's songs for her. I also started translating some stories for her. For some reason, I insisted to write everything on the computer. Probably because I wanted to publish the stuff in order to share it with others.

In those days, it wasn't easy to write Persian on your personal computer. I started using a system called ArabTeX for a while and during a visit to USA I bought a system called Nisus Writer that gave me the possibility to write Persian. But I never felt comfortable using these systems. Nowadays, it is rather easy to write Persian on the computer and I have seen some beautifully formatted newspapers, books and blogs typeset on the computer. Despite all the recent developments, I still find writing Persian on the computer a bit too difficult. I don't know how many of you regularly receive emails written in the Persian-Arabic script, but although some of the persons I communicate with do have Persian-Arabic fonts on their computers, I have never received such an email. Something is not right. To start with the keyboard I am using now does not have the Persian-Arabic letters. Furthermore, I have not seen any cheap (or free) software that is user friendly. The situation is much worse for Persian speakers born and educated outside Iran. Even if there were good software for writing Persian, most of the young Iranians outside Iran will not be able to use it effectively. The threshold of learning to write in the traditional Persian-Arabic script is too high.

During the late 80's I gave up on writing Persian on the computer and started thinking about writing Persian using the Latin alphabet. This was mainly for my kids. We did our best to teach them writing Persian but they didn't have the time or the motivation to train enough. I decided to create an alphabet that was close to what they already learn in school and also a writing system that makes it possible to write Persian. Another reason was that I realized that we write Persian using the latin alphabet quite often so we might as well create some conventions that facilitate this.

Anyway, saretuno dard nayâram, the following paper is about writing Persian using the latin alphabet and I hope those Persian speakers, who have difficulty writing in the traditional way, find it useful for publishing their words. The paper is located at the following address:

http://www.ida.liu.se/~jalma/efarsi.pdf

Unfortunately, the paper is not in tutorial form but I will provide a shorter version of it as a tutorial sometime in future.

Update: Some articles related to this writing system are on http://www.dabire.com.

Googoosh

The way Googoosh was treated by the Iranians in west surprised me completely. I like Googoosh and I have always enjoyed listening to her music.

Why criticize her? What more can a person do? She is an artist and a very good one. How much more can we expect from an individual? You can not expect her to think like you do. An artist does not necessarily have to have the right political views to contribute to the culture of a country.

We need to see things in a better way. What we lack most in Iran is people who do their thing well, be it singing, painting, cleaning, learning, helping friends, administration, teaching, running a TV-channel, running the country etc. So please if you see an Iranian doing a good job just give them encouragement. Or at least try to do your own job well.

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Why do we write so little?