The Inferno

Well, it’s been a year and four days and the issue hasn’t been resolved. I’m quite pachydermous like that, except that I haven’t forgotten or forgiven.

A small thing called life got in the way and prevented me from achieving closure on this issue. School, work and so on have conspired to keep this wretched matter out of my hands until now. But I’m close to graduating and should have a lot more free time on my hands after that.

One last thing, I’m not giving up this domain name. For the pittance it costs, its ROI is bound to be phenomenal (purely in terms of the angst and general thorniness, of course).

Picture Absurdistan: an oil-rich country ruled by despots, giving the innocent masses an illusion of choice, then yanking away that illusion with spurious vote-counting and obvious statistical fabrications. The innocent masses revolt and the authoritarian rulers send in their oil-fed ticks and imported mercenaries to subdue the rabble, how dare they rebel! Don’t they know that they should cower behind their chador forever, the spirit of God demands it be so! How dare they have the unmitigated gall to even dream of revolution! Return to your homes and praise God, and never meddle with the powers that be again.

But the people are young and idealistic, they don’t submit so easily. They rally in the millions and demand justice, Western-capitalistic style, the very thing the ruling elite detest. Perhaps all the propaganda from the free world gave them silly ideas like freedom of expression, freedom of speech, of assembly and so on. Such nonsensical notions must be crushed underfoot immediately, the elite thinks and vow to take sterner measures.

Not satisfied with shooting at and harassing people in broad daylight, the junta sends in the goons at night. People’s property is destroyed, people disappear in the middle of the night and the threat of violent retribution against all those who protested is now more real than ever. All communication with the outside world is monitored or completely severed. The people are isolated in their country and the beam of information grows dim. The brave diaspora rally on, but the nascent cause is crushed under the juggernaut.

Ok, enough allegories. At this point, the outcome is pretty straightforward. The people lack the arms and capabilities to launch a full scale assault on the ruling elite, especially with the Basij and Hezbollah goons on the prowl. The only alternative left is a war of attrition, some sort of urban guerrilla warfare. Perhaps an uprising reminiscent of the Warsaw Ghetto, though of course, in much milder form, since the Iranians are in no danger of being the victims of genocide. The Ayatollah can’t rule 11 million corpses after all.

There are many avenues open for the Iranians. From what we know, the majority of Iranians are below the age of 30, and their parents fought in the former revolution and the Iraq war. This vast reservoir of military experience must be tapped: how to cut phone wires, how to make Molotov cocktails, how to infiltrate government agencies, how to take over radio and TV stations and so on. All the fine skills that people learn when trying to wipe out wholesale numbers of one another.

One more thing, the resistance needs a charismatic leader, a la Che Hormizadeh. There’s already a rallying cry for an icon of the rebellion: Neda Agha-Soltan, who will hopefully become the Emmett Till of the Iranian people. But who will rise and take command of the revolt? One man or woman, who will be doomed to live a life of unease in shadows, trusting no one, coordinating everything and in perpetual danger of betrayal before the glorious finale.

A final thought: all this must not be for the sake of Mousavi. Dying for an illusion of choice is foolhardy at best, and stupid at worst. If people have to die, they might as well sacrifice themselves for real change, not another petticoat Emperor of the Ayatollah’s picking. A secular democracy, with separation of church and state and all that other stuff that we take for granted in the more enlightened parts of the world. And of course, if this is something that the majority of Iranians don’t want, then it will never come to be. A few rebellious idealists in a few metropolises take over a whole country and institute their own law….doubtful.

This is no game and I wish the Iranians all the best. Beat the Bastards!

So Feynman is a bit of a god amongst men (that’s quite a hail, coming from an atheist). And he is not bombastic, or needlessly pedantic. He may not be the formidable wordsmith that Hitchens is, but he is one of the greatest because he keeps it simple, stupid! In any case, he was too busy unraveling the universe to fight with a bunch of scurrilous wags in robes.

Here’s a little clip that should remind you why Feynman was simply superb: non-condescending, frank, charming and totally honest.

Enjoy!

Boy, was I ever naive. I assumed that a computer on its side would perform just as well as a computer standing straight up. Recently, my motherboard went on the fritz, which meant my computer would only boot up when horizontal. This meant that the hard drives were no longer spinning parallel to the ground, but perpendicular to it. I noticed an immediate performance hit, but put it down to my changing the jumpers on my SATA drives to SATA I from SATA II.

I decided to turn my computer back on its feet, ever so slowly yesterday, to see if it would still work and it does. I can’t turn it off and back on, but that’s ok, since I haven’t turned it off in over a year anyway.

Here’s the result for hdparm when it was horizontal:

# hdparm -tT /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads:   510 MB in  2.00 seconds = 254.88 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads:  174 MB in  3.02 seconds =  57.53 MB/sec

And here’s the result for hdparm when it’s vertical, as it’s meant to be used:

# hdparm -tT /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads:   1086 MB in  2.00 seconds = 542.75 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads:  170 MB in  3.02 seconds =  56.28 MB/sec

This is the make of the drive. A Seagate 320 GB SATA drive.

# hdparm -I /dev/sda

/dev/sda:

ATA device, with non-removable media
Model Number:       ST3320620AS
Serial Number:      3QF0JW7M
Firmware Revision:  3.AAE
...

So there you have it. Almost twice the speed to make the axis of rotation parallel with Mother Earth. Who would have thought it?

Moral of the story: Don’t run your hard drives vertically unless you have a very good reason to do so, or they were designed to be run that way.

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while. While I was convalescing, I watched two series in their entirety: Deadwood and Rome. Both were excellent, Deadwood’s up first.

Deadwood is a historical drama set in the territory of Deadwood in 1876, right before its accession to the Union. You can look up the rest of the details by yourself, but the essence is this: the show is profanity laden, with the F-word occuring something like 1.5 times for every minute of showtime. The swearing adds to the assault on your senses. The sets are immaculate, which leaves the characters. Of all the different characters, Al Swearengen is probably my favourite. A bloodthirsty villian and the centrepiece of the show, Al has his softer moments. The plot arcs are satisfactory, with enough twists, some seeming a bit convoluted. However, most of it is based on fact, and truth is stranger than fiction, so we’ll accept that. The best moments of the show are when real-life historical figures stride the stage, like colossi. Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp, Sheriff Seth Bullock: these names resonate throughout the show. If you read a lot of Wild West comics as a kid, know that these renditions are some of the best you’ll ever see. There isn’t as much gratuitous violence as in other HBO shows like Oz, but what’s there is well crafted and shown with a minimum of fuss.

Rome, on the other hand, has no comic book predecessors to make its visual consumption more delicious, but it’s still a superlative delight.  While I read all the Roman and Greek myths and loved them, I never really read anything beyond the obvious. Let’s face it, all I know of Caesar and Gaul is what I learned from Asterix and Co. The show follows Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo, two fierce legionnaires as their lives intertwine. All the heavyweights are present, Caesar is patriarchal yet fierce, Cato is whiny and needling, Magnus Pompey is avuncular and ambitious, Mark Antony is swaggering and brash…the list goes on. You may like the younger Octavian, or maybe the older Augustus more, my bet is on the younger Octavian. The show displays all the vulgarities of the time: human slavery, bloody sacrifices, gladiatorial combat and all the overarching reasons for a dismally short lifespan. However, these do not detract but rather add to the quality of the show.

In summary, if you’re bored and want to watch some good TV, in the vein of Oz or The Sopranos, give these two series a shot. You won’t regret it.

Well, it wasn’t quite Clash of the Titans, but it was close. In all likelihood, a Clash of the Titans for the younger generations who missed the real one. Wednesday night was when Megadeth and Slayer played together in almost two decades. The openers, Suicide Silence and Machinehead were ho hum. Machinehead used to slay, when they were called Vio-Lence. Check out Eternal Nightmare for some ripping thrash and Gaelic-accented vocals.

The best band tonight was definitely Slayer. Their setlist was:

• Disciple
• Jihad
• War Ensemble
• Chemical Warfare
• Ghosts of War
• Dead Skin Mask
• Live Undead
• Hell Awaits
• Psychopathy Red
• Mandatory Suicide
• Angel of Death
• Raining Blood
• South of Heaven

Some pretty good songs on there, along with the typical must-plays. I’m so disappointed, another Slayer show and nothing off Divine Intervention. Oh well, we got 4 songs off South, we should be happy. Araya was his usual paternal self, launching into Mandatory Suicide with: “Would you die for freedom? Would you do what the people of Iran are doing? They’re committing…..Mandatory Suicide”.

Megadeth was up next. Mustaine is still a a pompous twat, referring to the other bands as: “We’re playing tonight with Slayer, Machinehead and S…..uicide Silence”. Perhaps one day Araya can settle his hash. Deth’s setlist:

• Sleepwalker
• Wake Up Dead
• Hangar 18
• Peace Sells…
• She-wolf
• Kick the Chair
• Head Crusher
• Symphony of Destruction
• Skin O’ My Teeth
• In My Darkest Hour
• Holy Wars…

Not too bad, but plenty of stuff you’ll dislike if you stopped liking them after 1991. Watching Hangar 18 live reminds you of when you discovered Megadeth at 15 and tried to play it, but realized how insanely beyond your capabilities it was! Oh well, the band rolls on.

All in all, a good show. Slayer’s sound wasn’t as good as Megadeth’s, but those are petty gripes. 80 bucks is pricey but it brought out some of the best 80s thrash still alive today.

Next show: Necrophagist + Suffocation. Should be a blast.

Today we’ll examine the Iranian situation in greater detail. After discussions with my friends, it seems we’ve reached a consensus. A fairly obvious one but one that the protestors have to realize and act on, fast, or else all this momentum will have been for naught.

The real danger is that all this leads to some superficial compromise. Mousavi gets into the high chair, and the situation is defused and the people go back to their ordinary lives of repression and hidden angst, having been pacified (at least, temporarily).

The Ayatollah is in charge of Iran. Supreme Leader. Grand Pooh-bah. No one else, all these candidates are just puppets. By playing them against each other and being supreme arbiter, all he does is consolidate his position.

So, before any such occurrence, it’s time to strike at the source of the problem. The Ayatollah and all his mini-Ayatollahs. These guys will stand in the face of true democracy for all time, elected bootlickers will come and go. The protestors need to realize this and redirect their anger towards these jackasses, and string them from the nearest yardarm. Otherwise, history will simply repeat itself. Mousavi will win this “election” and every 4 years, some other fuckhead cleric will repeat history all over again.

I put the word “elections” in quotes, because it’s not a real election. It’s as if the Archbishop of Canterbury selected 6 bishops and the people had to vote for one of them (courtesy of an anonymous comment on the BBC). Some democracy! How far would a poor black boy named Obama get in a system like that? The whole concept of Iranian democracy is a farce and an oxymoron as long as those silly men in gowns hold power and decide policy.

I was informed that the Constitution of Iran itself sanctions the Ayatollah as the Supreme Leader. Well, how convenient, I say. Just further proof that the whole system is rotten and ought to be scrapped. The Japanese got a new constitution twice, in 1889 and 1947. It can be done and it might have to be.

Of course, all possible peaceful methods must be exhausted first. Something tells me that fundamentalist religious leaders aren’t exactly amenable to compromise and reason, though. When all peaceful avenues have been exhausted, only violent revolution remains. Every revolution sets a nation back a few decades, maybe a century in terms of economic progress and other metrics. The current regime has set Iran squarely back to the 1500s, so perhaps a new revolution will set Iran back a century at most, still netting a 400 year leap forward.

Let’s say that nothing happens and Iran and the world accepts Ahmadinejad as the victor. He’s promised no backing down on the nuclear programme and a host of other policies that places him squarely in the path of Israel. And we all know how Israel feels about sharing power in the Middle East. There may or may not be a war, with the ultimate outcome that the Ayatollah is deposed anyway, along with Ahmadinejad, fleeing the country into Armenia, dressed as Azeri brigands.

<conspiracy>Of course, there is the possibility that in 50 years documents will be declassified showing that the CIA pulled this off without a trace of involvement, their finest hour.</conspiracy>

tldr;

• Focus your energies on removing the Ayatollah and Co., everything else is a symptom
• Save your rage for the Basij and imported Hezbollah
• Get the diaspora to bankroll mercenaries for the eventual violent coup (Africa has the best mercenaries)
• If you MUST have religion, support moderates, not fundamentalist kooks.
• In a nutshell, either depose the Ayatollah or kiss the devil ( a particularly hirsute, noxious one, at that). See pic.

The world is watching, bring them down!

The Iranian election debacle is in full swing now. The blogosphere and twitfeeds (yes, there is a reason they’re called that) are full of rumours, conjectures, damned lies and a smattering of facts. Thanks to a large expatriate Iranian community at SFU, I’ve been kept abreast of all the events.

There isn’t much they can do from here, beyond token shows of solidarity and hitting F5 to the point of repetitive-stress injury. So let us examine all possible outcomes of the current hysteria.

• The youth actually manage to overthrow the government: This is the most desirable outcome for them, but it’s highly unlikely. At present, the crowds are angry spillovers onto the street without much organization. To actually defeat the brutal regime, they’d need sympathetic armed forces unwilling to fire on fellow Iranians and organization, LOTS of better organization. A truly violent revolution is almost unthinkable, I don’t think the average Iranian household stockpiles guns.
• The demonstration runs out of fire in the next week(s): This is the most likely, the rage will peter out and things will return to an eerie calm in the Islamic Republic of the Aryans. If this does happen, it’s safe to assume that the fires will stay dormant for a while, outwardly hidden but always smouldering with the passion of those who tasted freedom for a brief interval and then had it yanked away.

There is always the hidden face of the Ayatollah behind everything. One has to admire the perverse brilliance of a mind that can accomplish such feats. Present the public with two odious candidates, one only slightly more evolved than the other and watch the people duke it out and get distracted from real issues: it’s the economy, stupid!

One more thing, more and  more Iranians need to reject Islam and all its superstitious hogwash. Surely they can see that their fundamentalist brand of religion is the real problem here. It’s what’s led a bunch of hypocritical holier-than-thous to power and given them the ability to impose their barbaric, medieval rules on a largely young and hip populace. Get rid of the mad mullahs and sanity will resume. Everything else is just a symptom of pandering to religion. There’s a reason Mike Huckabee was called “The Ayatollah of Arkansas”, effectively ending his mainstream chances: because the Ayatollah is the epitome of what should be avoided, a religious madman in charge of a state.

So, what is to happen now? After it all dies down and telecommunication links are restored, the youth band together and send each other secret messages in ways the older generations can’t fathom. Supported by the disapora, the flame of revolution burns in silence, until one day it all erupts. Like Tiananmen but hopefully more successfully.

Footnote: the image shows a crudely manipulated Khamenei vs Mousavi. The title is an alliterative wordplay, a la Kramer vs. Kramer. I know they’re different, but I couldn’t resist. After all, why would Khomenei fight Khamenei?