A few days ago I got an email from Stephen Haddad from vatantalk.com, a brand new Iranian Blog and Social Network. Haddad told me in his email that “VatanTalk is a hybrid, blog and social network, made especially for the Iranian community.”

Tags: Iranian Blog and Social Network, Iranian community, Stephen Haddad, vatantalk.com
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Since when is pandora charging for music, especially with an ad right next to the request?

Tags: last.fm, McDonalds, Pandora
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In my opinion, and I wrote the song so my opinion should count for something, the key lyric in the whole song is A single slide, a single move, a single raised hand in the room could shift the lines that change the whole world too. Sour Grapes is essentially a song about change and behind its musical complexity it carries a pretty simple message: if you want to change your world you have to first change yourself and then stand up for the change. Yes, I know it sounds very Michael Jackson Man in the mirror but so what? That jacko was onto something (before he caught glimpse of his reflection and jumped into another nose job).

However, Sour Grapes begins with the lyric, “We made this bed now we lie in it, started a fire just to burn in it, make no bones about it.” Change is not easy. Our current existence is a bed we have made. To change means we have to be willing to let go of our current identity, to end the safety of what we know. “Sleep now under these uncertainties. Dream now, dream of all the possibilities” It is easy to dream of the possibilities but it is the uncertainty of the outcome that mostly prevents change because what we leave behind after we change is still a part of who we are. I think it was Marcus Aurelius who said (and I am paraphrasing) “What ever is, is also the seed of the change to come”.

So, this being said, the bold steps that the people of Iran are taking, in trying to change is remarkable. They are “peeling layers of life from layers of death” but in death there is life – and it is a new life they are fighting for.

Everything is so connected. Change is so connected. It is remarkable that I have a common understanding with people with whom I may only have an genetic connection. I am blown a way that I am moved by their fight for change.

They are “spitting sour grapes through the skin of their teeth” and asking, “How many lies can we entertain?”

To them I say, “Here is wishing you everything you dream about.” Your change will come. May your leaders take note. They can not stop change. They may only delay it. In the words of John Naisbitt, to conclude, “Change occurs when there is a confluence of both changing values and economic necessity, not before”.

Tags: Buddahead SOur Grapes, Iranian Democracy, Iranian Election, Iranian Revolution, jacko, John Naisbitt, Man in the mirror, Marcus Aurelius, Michael Jackson
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Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, die for it, anything but live for it

The final words of a masterful work by Temple Grandin.

Tags: Religion, Sour grapes buddahead, temple grandin, thinking in pictures
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I was just recently asked who I would have voted for if I could have voted in the Iranian Election. To be honest I am neither for or against Ahmadinejad or Mousavi. I don’t know about the politics of either enough to be able to vote for either. But, I also don’t think that the uprising in Iran has much to do really with either Mousavi or Ahmadinejad. I think people are standing up for something greater.

When my twin sons were born I wrote a letter to them, trying to put together the best of my knowledge and advice for them, just in case something happened to me and I was not around to teach them these things myself.

In that letter I quoted John Stuart Mills who once wrote that truths can be defined and refined through, “the fullest and freest comparison of opposite ideas”. I think this is what I the people of Iran are largely standing up for – their ability (or lack there of) of full and free comparison of opposite ideas.

So, what I would have voted for would be the candidate who would allow this and not the one who would call those who have opposite ideas as dissidents.

Religion obviously also plays an enormous part in Iranian politics and the lives of Iranian people. In my letter to my sons I also wrote this paragraph (which to be transparent is not all my original thought):

Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you; In all things, strive to cause no harm; Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect…Test all things, always check your ideas against the facts, and be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not conform to them… always respect the right of others to disagree with you; Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason and experience, do not allow yourself to be blindly led by others; Question everything

This may be a longer way of saying the same this Mills said, but in my opinion a candidate, a party, a government, or a nation, that does not believe in this and fight for this is doing it self a great injustice.

Tags: Ahmadinejad, Iran, Iranian Election, Iranian People, Iranian Politics, John Stuar Mills, Mousavi
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