vivacious

در انتظار روزی نو

2009-05-31T08:40:00.002-04:00

نیست در شهر نگاری که دل ما ببرد
بختم ار یار شود رختم از این جا ببرد

The sick mind of a mathematician!!

2009-04-19T13:10:00.006-04:00

Here are some videos of the great mathematician: Tom Lehrel

These lyrics can only come out of the sick mind of a mathematician!!

Poisoning pigeons in the parks:

I hold your hand in mine:

Lobachevsky:

Nowruz in Canada!

2009-03-24T09:07:00.002-04:00

Boris and Haftsin

25 things about me!

2009-03-03T23:55:00.012-05:00

1) I think that I will never die! The same way that I don't remember being born!!!

2) I don't appreciate it when the people who know me pass by and pretend that they don't see me.

3) I strongly admire motivated people with high self-esteem. I enjoy being surrounded by motivated people.

4) I have to confess that music can do anything to me, make me dance, make me infinitely happy ... It can make me totally lose my mind. My body takes alcohol easier than music!
The very few times that I cried passed the age of 12, it was always because of a music.

5) I sometimes over-think about simple little stupid things. It is a weak part of my character.

6) I enjoy starting my day by saying a loud good morning to the first person I see.

7) I am looking forward to the day that I speak French better than English. What I miss a lot about Persian is the poetry and the literature.

8) Passed the age of 50 I will become a writer or a poet!!!

9) I have always been puzzled by the fact that there exist such a thing as "logic"!!!

10) I love philosophy but I don't enjoy reading books on philosophy any more! Instead I have become more inclined to read on psychology!!

11) The one thing I can't live without is the power of imagination.

12) I love dancing!

13) I hate nothing as much as dishonesty.

14) One of the greatest joys in my life is to have a nice discussion about an interesting topic (philosophy, life, physics, psychology, etc) with a friend.

15) Once upon a time, I had such friends (ref. to number 14) . I have spent years looking for more people who would be willing to share their thoughts, ideologies and opinions with me.

16) As far as I am concerned, as long as there are new interesting things to learn in life, happiness lives next door.

17) I have a set of very ambitious dreams in my life. They have proven to be evolving as I grow up, nonetheless, they never go away.

18) When I love, I really mean it.

19) I go through one or two year long cycles of being sociable and extrovert and periods of getting lost in my own world when I minimize my interaction with the outside world for months.

20) Between the age of 13 and 19 I wrote a set of essays on philosophy!! It was mostly on something that I was calling "Neo-romanticism" (Disclaimer: it does not have anything to due with this Neo-Romanticism.)

21) I wish I could play violin or piano well.

22) I like fine arts a lot but I never wanted to be a professional artist. (With the exception of the first year of high school when I thought it would have been great if I could become a singer!!!)

23) I am Iranian and I am so damn proud of it (this part I usually don't say)!!! and it hurts me when I see that the image of Iran that has been depicted in west is so terrible.

24) I hate our government. The politics of middle east is dirty.

25) I feel extremely lucky!!

What does it look like if you accelerate close to the speed of light!

2009-02-23T21:43:00.002-05:00

Big Questions

2009-02-21T17:13:00.028-05:00

Inspired by Mohammad's post (1) "توی سرم جا نمیشه " I decided to write a few words on "Big Questions". Not that I feel the need to add a note to his post; or agree or disagree with him, but mostly because I want to express the same issue from my own point of view.(2,3)

At any epoch through the history, human kind has always been struggling with a set of "Big Questions" concerning the meaning of life, why we are here, where we come from and where we are going. The form of these questions are subject to change as is human's knowledge. What used to be considered a deep question -as Mohammad was quoting from "Isaiah Berlin", a problem beyond our time- thousands of years ago is not necessarily a deep question today.

However, there has never been a human with no "Big Question". These "Big Questions" are strongly time, place and society dependent. By studying the mythologies, the religions and the traditions of ancient societies we learn about what kind of "Big Questions" they have been struggling with. This is intimately tied with the long history of metaphysics in human societies. The pyschological need to find answers to big questions is, in fact, responsible for the creation of if not all, most of religions, traditions and superstitions we have seen through the history as well as a more reason-based intellectual approach called philosophy.(4)

Wikipedia defines: "Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, justice, validity, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these questions (such as mysticism or mythology) by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned argument."
This critical, systematic approach is the crucial feature that differentiates between philosophy and the other approaches to addressing big questions. Here, the emphasis is on the proper use of reason or logic.
Wikipedia:
"The concept 'reason' is closely related to the concepts of language and logic, as reflected in the multiple meanings of the Greek word "logos", the root of logic, which translated into Latin became "ratio" and then in French "raison", from which the English word "reason" was derived."
(4)

Not only societies have never been ignorant of this psychological need of human being, but also they have tried to feed individuals with different packaged sets of answers (beliefs). That is why the chances of a child growing in Saudia Arabia becoming a Muslim is much more than a western child.

Due to what Mohammad was calling it "Being limited to time and space" or in other words the psychological fact that we define ourselves in our societies, we subconsciously buy a lot of these packaged set of believes. The modern agnostic view point that Mohammad is talking about is one of the products of our time, the same way that Christianity and Islam were products of their time. How were the old packages such as religions different compared to the new schools of thoughts (ideologies) and how do they evolve is another long interesting story. Nevertheless, I would like to mention the importance of an attemp to re-think about these marketed packages.

The part of the society (let's call them enlightened people for the moment) which always tries to question the rules and think differently is carrying a large burden on its shoulder in the evolution of these socially imposed set of believes. The enlightened people are inevitably struggling with questions beyond their time.

In a large scale, out of these movement comes the renaissances and movements that help us improve the instructions that we sell to the people as a guide to life. The laws of our societies are intimately related to the these set of beliefs. As a recent example of this, one can name how homosexuality turned from a crime and a psychological disorder to an acceptable behaviour in some societies today.

I said all this to say a few words on the nature of the "Big Questions" scientists are struggling with. However, I think I would pass for now. Hopefully, I will come back and continue this note some other time.

1) Roughly translates to "Can't wrap my head around it."
2) I have to apologize to my Iranian friends who might be reading this post for switching to English.
3) I wish I could latex this! \footnote{...}
4) I wish I had kept myself updated enough so that instead of refering to wikipedia repetitively, I could have refered to more original sources.

Unfair

2009-02-18T16:47:00.004-05:00

I wish I had two or three lives to live...
Or at least had two copies of each day!

Disclaimer: This wish has nothing to do with the groundhog day!

Imagination

2009-02-05T00:27:00.002-05:00

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

Albert Einstein

Optical Observation of the Jets of Supermassive Black Holes

2009-01-29T11:06:00.004-05:00

The jet originating from the center of M87 in this image comes from an active galactic nucleus that may contain a supermassive black hole. Credit: Hubble Space Telescope/NASA/ESA. (Taken from Wikipedia)

Second Opinion

2009-01-25T21:19:00.005-05:00

It is always a good idea to look for a second opinion even on a framework which seems to make absolute sense.

Example: Just randomly, I asked Samir's opinion about the Kerr/CFT correspondence!!

Holography

2009-01-25T20:59:00.003-05:00

It is a fairly well-thought statement to say:
"Any diffeomorphism invariant theory of gravity with any arbitrary matter content has a dual DESCRIPTION in one lower dimension".
Notice that I used the word "description" and not a theory. Because the dual description might be totally unphysical.

Lessons from academia 2

2009-01-03T13:28:00.004-05:00

The first semester of my Ph.D. went by unbelievably fast. While I greatly enjoyed learning geometry and topology, things did not go that well in research for me. Both of the projects I was working on since summer ended in obscurity. On the quantum information side, our conjecture that a unitary two-design quantum circuit shows rapid mixing failed the numerical tests leaving us with a lack of explanation to reconcile our intuition with the numerics. Whereas, in the other project on AdS/CFT and Condensed matter stuff we were shocked by seeing a paper appearing in Arxiv with identical results as ours!

There is an important lesson for me here. There is always downs and ups in research. Not every projects that you start has a glorious successful ending!

Physics is fun!

2008-12-19T16:22:00.004-05:00

It is a Friday evening. Nobody is at the office or in the library!!
The little fox in my Gmail is having the monkey over for tea and cookies!!!
The chick has gone up one of the seats in the garden! I thought a lot about it but couldn't figure out why!
I am browsing through papers and books to find a bound on the second largest eigenvalue of a continuous-time Markov chain!
Do you know any, by any chance?

Statistics on Manifolds

2008-12-10T15:52:00.007-05:00

Geometry here! Geometry there! Geometry everywhere!
Whatever I have thought of in the past year is either about geometry or has a geometrical representation!!!
From General Relativity, Black Holes to Classical Mechanics, Field Theory, Super-symmetry and Quantum Gravity, it is all geometry!
Bottom Line:
At this point, it seems to me that
"Physics is either Statistics (Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics)
or geometry (Classical Mechanics, Symmetries and Manifolds) or doing statistics in different geometries (Field Theory and General Relativity)"
Period!

Geometry

2008-12-06T12:13:00.003-05:00

If you are one of those people who often complain about why there is so much effort going into the String Theory, I think you should blame it on the fun of learning geometry! Who cares about the Planck physics anyways?!!! Let's have some fun playing with geometries!!

La Chanson des Vieux Amants

2008-11-18T12:32:00.003-05:00

Bien sûr, nous eûmes des orages
Vingt ans d`amour, c`est l`amour fol
Mille fois tu pris ton bagage
Mille fois je pris mon envol
Et chaque meuble se souvient
Dans cette chambre sans berceau
Des éclats des vieilles tempêtes
Plus rien ne ressemblait à rien
Tu avais perdu le goût de l`eau
Et moi celui de la conquête

Mais mon amour
Mon doux mon tendre mon merveilleux amour
De l`aube claire jusqu`à la fin du jour
Je t`aime encore tu sais je t`aime

Moi, je sais tous tes sortilèges
Tu sais tous mes envoûtements
Tu m`as gardé de pièges en pièges
Je t`ai perdue de temps en temps
Bien sûr tu pris quelques amants
Il fallait bien passer le temps
Il faut bien que le corps exulte
Finalement finalement
Il nous fallut bien du talent
Pour être vieux sans être adultes

Oh, mon amour
Mon doux mon tendre mon merveilleux amour
De l`aube claire jusqu`à la fin du jour
Je t`aime encore, tu sais, je t`aime

Et plus le temps nous fait cortège
Et plus le temps nous fait tourment
Mais n`est-ce pas le pire piège
Que vivre en paix pour des amants
Bien sûr tu pleures un peu moins tôt
Je me déchire un peu plus tard
Nous protégeons moins nos mystères
On laisse moins faire le hasard
On se méfie du fil de l`eau
Mais c`est toujours la tendre guerre

Oh, mon amour...
Mon doux mon tendre mon merveilleux amour
De l`aube claire jusqu`à la fin du jour
Je t`aime encore tu sais je t`aime.

and he said ...

2008-10-26T14:11:00.002-04:00

شبی که ماه مراد از افق شود طالع / بود که پرتو نوری ببام ما افتد

ز خاک کوی تو که هر گه که دم زند حافظ / نسيم گلشن جام در مشام ما افتد

Here it begins

2008-10-14T23:20:00.001-04:00

Here it begins!
The competition has started!

104 weeks!

2008-10-05T11:06:00.000-04:00

In two years from now I have to apply for Postdoc positions!!! ...

Songs, Scents and Dreams

2008-10-01T22:31:00.004-04:00

7498 days...
Unforgettable songs, Unforgettable scents, Unforgettable dreams

A New Day

2008-10-01T09:50:00.002-04:00

Now I remember. Last night I dreamed that I am smoking cigarettes!!! I was coughing badly and I was still smoking! I woke up feeling guilty!

That was yesterday and yesterday is past. Hard to prove it ever existed!
The question is, what is the agenda for today?

شعر معاصر

2008-09-28T11:02:00.000-04:00

امروز که نانوا هم جوش شیرین می زند
وای به حال دل فرهاد

Happy LHC day!

2008-09-11T11:54:00.006-04:00

Time: 2 A.M.
Location: a random sketchy pizza place

We are having pizza and two men in the their sixties are watching the news on TV. The news is of course about LHC. After all, it is the LHC day!!

Man A turns to man B and says: "Then they wonder why we have earthquakes"!!!

Something to think about!

2008-09-07T12:15:00.003-04:00

An effective field theory (EFT) is equivalent to a system of statistical mechanics close to a second order phase transition. The correlation functions in the EFT go like $e^{-m/\Lambda}$ and therefore the assumption of small masses in the EFT corresponds to the divergence of correlation functions in the Stat. Mech. system close to the continuous phase transition.
Think about this:
What is the meaning of a non-renomrmalizable EFT in the Stat. Mech.-EFT dictionary?

How ...

2008-09-06T14:48:00.003-04:00

I don't know how I managed to read so much about qunatum gravity without properly learning supersymmetry (SUSY) or supergravity (SUGRA)!!

I strongly recommend reading SUGRA! It's fun!

Seeing into God!

2008-09-02T20:52:00.004-04:00

Here is CNN's article about Nima Arkani-hamed. In the "Sound Off: Your opinions and comments" section you read the following comment about LHC:
"you will see into god with this experiment.
this is where god and science finally meet.
you will be amazed before you are halfway through this experiment. " Ken Dukoff

And here I begin

2008-09-02T13:54:00.005-04:00

Tell them that today, Tuesday September the 2nd 2008 A.D., I became a Ph.D. student!
Tell them that it is the beginning of an era.
An era which will be named ...

String Theory or Loop Quantum Gravity

2008-08-16T15:07:00.002-04:00

Look at Einstein's field equations. On the left hand side, you have geometry and on the right, you have matter. A theory of quantum gravity can describe geometry as a form of matter (gravitons) or describe the matter as a form of geometry (loop quantum gravity?)... What do you think?
Are there other ways?

After all, it is important to be aware that whatever the answer is, it is an effective theory, defined at a certain energy scale! Forget about a scale-free theory! Not gonna be found, my friend! ever!

A Typical Day of My Life

2008-08-16T11:38:00.017-04:00

It's a typical day of my life. It's a warm sunny day. I can feel the warmness of sunlight on my skin, the gentle breeze in my hair and the wet grass I am lying on.

It's a typical day of my life. Here I am, sitting at my desk, in my office, room 327A, in physics building, a simple building in McGill university with a couple of ten thousands students, a university in the city of Montreal, a city in the east of Canada with a population over three millions. Canada is the second largest country on the Earth, which is the third planet in our gigantic solar system in the third arm of a galaxy called Milky Way. Our solar system is larger than ten billion kilometers in diameter.
There are something like ten billion stars like our Sun in our galaxy.
Our galaxy is a galaxy out of the ten billion galaxies inside our visible horizons in the sky.
A horizon that is larger than 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilometers! This is as far as you can possibly see!
What's sitting behind our horizon?
I am quite sure, a lot!

Here I am, writting here. It's almost noon. A sunny Saturday. 16th of August, 2008 years after the birth of Jesus! Something like thirty times bigger than the average life of a human being these days. I barely know anything about what was going on ten thousands or hundred thousand years ago. I have heard that human being has been living on this planet for a couple of million years. I am not much aware of what people before me did or what people after me will do. I have been told that the life appeared on this planet a billion years ago. When I was younger I read in books that the Earth was born 4.5 billion years ago. And now that I have grown up, I have heard people saying that the universe is 14.7 billions years old.

Here I am, sitting on my chair, thinking about quantum gravity, when there was no when and where there was no where! When and where, space and time weren't there. We call it quantum gravity.

Yes! It's a typical day of my life!

Goldfish and Nowruz

2008-08-10T11:28:00.000-04:00

نفرین شدگان

2008-08-09T17:15:00.003-04:00

علم الهدی: "متاسفم که یک زن جلودارمان در المپیک است"

Down with this ideology!
Down with us that heard it and chose to remain silent!

...

2008-08-04T21:40:00.003-04:00

Just a short music from Zbigniew Preisner

Rebel

2008-08-03T14:02:00.001-04:00

You are whatever you think you are!

Big Fish

2008-07-31T19:20:00.000-04:00

And I tell you my friend,
The key is to go for the big fish!
Do not be content with small achievements.
Aim high and find your way through all the unpleasant moments of disappointments...
You live once!

Help!

2008-07-23T13:37:00.004-04:00

You think you are smart?
You think you can make a big change?
You want to be useful?
Go and study Oncology!
Join the movement for finding a cure to cancer!
They need you!
If they didn't I would never ask you this!

Fundamental Degrees of Freedom

2008-07-07T19:25:00.002-04:00

What are the fundamental degrees of freedom of String Theory? It is not exactly clear!
The high energy string scattering seems to put a bound on the smallest scale one can resolve in string theory! What if one pumps more energy?
Is there a link with Hagedorn phase transition? If yes, what is the new phase? A topological change in space-time?
Is there a link with the end of a black hole's life?
Isn't it fascinating?

Statistical Mechanics above all

2008-07-05T08:58:00.005-04:00

Quantum field theory (Continuum Limit, Propagators, Feynman diagrams, Renormalization Group, Renormalizable versus non-renomalizable theories, Effective Field Theory, Phase Transitions, Symmetry Breaking, ...) is nothing but statistical mechanics!

I believe, in theoretical physics, we say we understand something if we can reduce it to a quantum stat. mech. problem. That's why we say we don't understand gravity! That's indeed what the goal of quantum gravity is!

Hagedorn Phase and Black Holes

2008-07-02T09:11:00.004-04:00

There is a few indications showing that there might be a connection between the Hagedorn transition and Black hole formation in string theory!
This makes my days these days!

Night, Moonlight and the Madman

2008-06-27T00:07:00.003-04:00

DON'T HURT ME!
I AM JUST A GUEST!
JUST A MADMAN!
DON'T HURT ME!
OR I WILL STOP SMILING!

Lessons from Academia

2008-06-26T19:15:00.003-04:00

First thing I learned in graduate school: Nobody cares how many beautiful ideas you have. What matters is how many of them you can prove!

به مهدی

2008-06-23T21:22:00.009-04:00

What follows is a response -but not an answer- to the post "خواستم بنویسم" from my great friend, Mahdi:

How many times have we decided to write and we have stopped ourselves? How many sentences have we left incomplete? How many pages should we write of this pain? Is there any of us who has never felt it? This pain is closer to us than ourselves.
and life goes on...
and you know my friend;
It is not a feeling of nationalism. It is broader than that.
It is the pain of understanding.
A pain I embrace wholeheartedly...

"Pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding."
Khalil Gibran

"Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain."
William Faulkner

Journalism

2008-06-14T13:54:00.001-04:00

"There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community" Oscar Wilde

No Explanation!

2008-06-14T13:46:00.002-04:00

"A mind once stretched by new thoughts can never regain its original shape."
Albert Einstein

Sometimes you hear a quote that in a sentence says what you have been trying to say for a long time and couldn't find a way.

From fields to strings

2008-06-13T23:17:00.003-04:00

Don't take this too serious!!

I think the transition from fields to strings is not that unnatural!!! ;)
If you're asking why, I strongly recommend learning SU(N) for large N gauge theories. If that was not illuminating enough, maybe thinking deeper about the derivation of low energy super-gravity of string theory can help!

Shut up and Calculate!

2008-06-03T23:37:00.004-04:00

A lot of people start discussing things as soon as they realize that they don't understand a thing! There is a famous suggestion that David Gross used to give to his students. When there is a problem that you don't understand instead of opening your mouth and talking about it passionately, shut up and calculate!
A day of calculation is sometimes worth months of discussion!

Those who think freely!

2008-05-27T21:12:00.006-04:00

My stay in Canada is reaching the end of its second year. I believe that now, I can bravely say that the phase of a new cultural experience and hasty judgments has passed long ago. It is almost the time that my system of socio-cultural, political and philosophical beliefs and standpoints, that have been refined gradually under the influence of the society I am living in, is reflecting on my everyday life.

In spite of the high walls I had built around myself as a means of protection against cultural harms, the messages finally made it through, reviving my social responsibility of "Being Influential As Much As I Can". Many years ago, the pain of watching this senseless drama of a society of intolerance, inequality, prejudice and ignorance became so unbearable that I chose to close my eyes. Surprisingly enough, I have decided to open them once again.

Here, I feel safe.
I have gained the right to be politically correct!!!
In my new home, I can think freely!

Energy!

2008-05-19T09:58:00.002-04:00

There is an evident energy unbalance between my environment and me! If I can figure out one day how to deal with this energy unbalance to minimize the waste of energy and production of heat ... Just if ...

Faith: Security and Risk

2008-04-22T21:34:00.006-04:00

The title is the title of a book my friend -Richard- wrote a few years ago.

Is faith a search for security?
Is faith the reason for taking risk?
Note that faith is not necessarily religious.

"Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned... If it lays claim to ultimacy it demands total surrender of him, who accepts this claim, and it promises total fulfillment."
Paul Tillich , The Dynamics of Faith

"Success and Happiness must come, and the less one cares for them, they more they can."
Victor Frankl, The Will to Meaning

You know what? It all boils down to Psychology at the end!

Talk to me! ...
Talk to me about your fears...
From your feelings of insecurity...

"Those who have the faith of children will also have the troubles of children"
Robert Hugh Benson, The light Invisible

My Country

2008-04-18T13:13:00.002-04:00

With my whole heart, to those who did all this to us:

در مملکت چو غرش شیران گذشت و رفت
این عوعو سگان شما نیز بگذرد

There is still hope...

از رنجی که می بریم

2008-04-12T09:14:00.001-04:00

موضوع استفتاء: ازدواج و روابط زن و مرد > حكم زن پنجم دائمي

http://www.rohani.ir/estefta/ans.php?stfid=38&subid=&merg=1

Tribute to Farhad

2008-04-12T08:31:00.001-04:00

کوچه

2008-04-11T19:12:00.003-04:00

I don't know how my life would have looked like if I didn't have Persian poetry with me.
Siamak sent me this link. Listening to it, for a few minutes, I had such an indescribably pure feeling that doesn't fit in words.

Qui est-ce que je suis?

2008-04-10T19:09:00.008-04:00

Je suis un écrivain.
De temps en temps, j'écris une histoire!
Pas à vendre!
Je n'écris pas pour gagner de l'argent,
ou pour changer le monde,
ou parce que c'est mon travail.
Si j'écris, c'est parce que j'ai besoin d'écrire!!
Je suis un écrivain qui écrit sa vie!

ُStands Worried at My Side

2008-04-10T18:56:00.004-04:00

...
نگران با من استاده سحر
صبح می خواهد از من
کز مبارک دم او آورم
این قوم به جان باخته را بلکه خبر
در جگر لیکن خاری
از ره این سفرم می شکند
...
نیما یوشیج

...

Dawn stands worried at my side
Morning urges me to announce
Its arrival to the lot
Alas! A thorn inside
Stops me in my tracks
...

By "Nima Yushij"

Écris-moi une autre Histoire!

2008-03-30T23:59:00.005-04:00

Écris-moi! Ecris-moi!
From your most reticent moments!
From your never shared feelings of bliss!
From the jovial Could-it-be-more-beautiful thoughts that pass through your mind!

Écris-moi!
I am here to read it! Read it over and over again!

Écris-moi tes nuits!
From the most silent nights!
Your never heard clamors!
From the darkest nights!
And the fire!
Red, yellow,
And the swing!

Écris-moi!
From your longings!
And your desire!
Your never-seen tears of joy!
From the happiest boy in the world!

Écris-moi tes rêves!
Écris-moi une autre Histoire!

Unconditional!

2008-03-25T21:36:00.005-04:00

Location: University of Toronto
Time: Unknown

Scene 1: He is explaining to me the expectations he has from his students as we are walking down the hallway. We enter the "Quantum Cryptography Laboratory"!. It is a huge laboratory with a lot of students working in it. As he is showing me around the lab he says: "Here we have more than one hundred students working on continuous variable quantum cryptography day and night! It is a competition and we want to be the first to implement it. Don't forget! No working on your own ideas! As long as you are here you should be focused just on this project. If we figure out that you are working on something else you will be unconditionally expelled from the university!!!."

Scene 2: It is a giant classroom. He is giving a lecture. I am sitting somewhere in the back, pretending that I am taking notes while I am actually playing with equations of general relativity and thermodynamics. I'm pretty sure one of these days I will find the answer!!

and I wake up!... It is still dark...

Sure!

2008-03-17T19:28:00.003-04:00

خنک آن قماربازی که بباخت هر چه بودش
بنماند هیچش الا هوس قمار دیگر

Brand New Start

2008-03-14T09:52:00.001-04:00

"though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending" Carl Bard

C'est beau la Vie

2008-03-06T12:20:00.000-05:00

Le vent dans tes cheveux blonds
Le soleil à l'horizon
Quelques mots d'une chanson
Que c'est beau, c'est beau la vie
Un oiseau qui fait la roue
Sur un arbre déjà roux
Et son cri par-dessus tout
Que c'est beau, c'est beau la vie
Tout ce qui tremble et palpite
Tout ce qui lutte et se bat
Tout ce que j'ai cru trop vite
A jamais perdu pour moi
Pouvoir encore regarder
Pouvoir encore écouter
Et surtout pouvoir chanter
Que c'est beau, c'est beau la vie
Le jazz ouvert dans la nuit
Sa trompette qui nous suit
Dans une rue de Paris
Que c'est beau, c'est beau la vie
La rouge fleur éclatée
D'un néon qui fait trembler
Nos deux ombres étonnées
Que c'est beau, c'est beau la vie
Tout ce que j'ai failli perdre
Tout ce qui m'est redonné
Aujourd'hui me monte aux lèvres
En cette fin de journée
Pouvoir encore partager
Ma jeunesse, mes idées
Avec l'amour retrouvé
Que c'est beau, c'est beau la vie
Pouvoir encore te parler
Pouvoir encore t'embrasser
Te le dire et le chanter
Oui c'est beau, c'est beau la vie

Jean Ferrat

Colorful

2008-03-06T10:07:00.003-05:00

It is a colorful life!

Yes!

2008-03-05T20:24:00.002-05:00

Simple is beautiful!
It is loud!

No!

2008-03-03T09:41:00.002-05:00

They don't understand it!
I won't let them take it away!
It's so cliché!

.. et c'est la vie!

2008-02-25T17:55:00.007-05:00

I am coming back to my office after a long discussion with Robert on the influence of geometry perturbations on hydrodynamics. I am still a bit puzzled about the interpretation of what the linear order calculation shows... I wash off the chalk on my hands and go back to my desk... Inbox 1!
Yes, Princeton University Graduate Admission Decision! It starts with
"Thanks you for applying to our Graduate School for ..."
Well, it is the rejection letter from the only place that I have been dreaming of going to in the whole past year. The only place that I actually had a hope for...

Surprisingly, I was neither feeling upset nor disappointed!
I was actually smiling!

Once again my life proved to be be extremely unpredictable...
How boring it would have been, if things had happened the way that I had thought of!
There has been no single turning point in my life that I could have predicted!
What a gifted life!
The most surrealistic reality!
What is the surprise that is waiting for me this time?
What is coming after this?
I am eagerly waiting to know.

Pourquoi je vis

2008-02-20T09:34:00.000-05:00

Pourquoi je vis

Pourquoi que je vis
Pourquoi que je vis
Pour la jambe jaune
D'une femme blonde
Appuyée au mur
Sous le plein soleil
Pour la voile ronde
D'un pointu du port
Pour l'ombre des stores
Le café glacé
Qu'on boit dans un tube
Pour toucher le sable
Voir le fond de l'eau
Qui devient si bleu
Qui descend si bas
Avec les poissons
Les calmes poissons
Ils paissent le fond
Volent au-dessus
Des algues cheveux
Comme zoizeaux lents
Comme zoizeaux bleus
Pourquoi que je vis
Parce que c'est joli

-Boris Vian.

Insanity

2008-02-17T19:01:00.002-05:00

Being sane for a long time, I think it is time to go insane for a while!

Nima

2008-02-16T09:26:00.004-05:00

مهتاب

می تراود مهتاب
می درخشد شب تاب
نیست یکدم شکند خواب به چشم کس ولیک
غم این خفته چند
خواب در چشم ترم می شکند.

نگران با من استاده سحر.
صبح میخواهد از من
کز مبارک دم او آورم این قوم به جان باخته را بلکه خبر.
در جگر لیکن خاری
از ره این سفرم می شکند.

نازک آرای تن ساق گلی
که به جان اش کشتم
و به جان دادم اش آب.
ای دریغا! به برم می شکند.

دست ها می سایم
تا دری بگشایم.
بر عبث می پایم
که به در کس آید.
در و دیوار به هم ریخته شان
بر سرم می شکند.

می تراود مهتاب
می درخشد شب تاب
مانده پای آبله از راه دراز
بر دم دهکده مردی تنها
کوله بارش بر دوش
دست او بر در، می گوید با خود:
غم این خفته چند
خواب در چشم ترم می شکند.

Harmony

2008-02-07T21:59:00.000-05:00

Yes, That's life!

That's why I refuse to discuss politics!

2008-02-01T21:41:00.000-05:00

Just some sad facts!
Iran-Iraq war

Iran:
900 tanks
1,000 armored vehicles
1,000 artillery pieces
70 aircraft
750 helicopters

Iraq:
5,000 tanks
4,000 armored vehicles
7,330 artillery pieces
500+ aircraft,
100+ helicopters

Casualties and losses:
Iran: Est. 750,000-1,000,000 soldiers/militia/civilians killed or wounded
Iraq: Est. 375,000-400,000 soldiers/militia/civilians killed or wounded

"With more than 100,000 Iranian victims of Iraq's chemical weapons during the eight-year war, Iran is one of the countries most severely afflicted by weapons of mass destruction"

"Nerve gas killed about 20,000 Iranian soldiers immediately, according to official reports. Of the 90,000 survivors, some 5,000 seek medical treatment regularly and about 1,000 are still hospitalized with severe, chronic conditions."

According to retired Colonel Walter Lang, senior defense intelligence officer for the United States Defense Intelligence Agency at the time, "the use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern" to Reagan and his aides, because they "were desperate to make sure that Iraq did not lose." He claimed that the Defense Intelligence Agency "would have never accepted the use of chemical weapons against civilians, but the use against military objectives was seen as inevitable in the Iraqi struggle for survival"

Aftermath:

The war was disastrous for both countries, stalling economic development and disrupting oil exports. It cost Iran an estimated 1 million casualties,^[26] Iraq was left with serious debts to its former Arab backers, including US$14 billion loaned by Kuwait, a debt which contributed to Saddam's 1990 decision to invade.

Much of the oil industry in both countries was damaged in air raids. Iran's production capacity has yet to fully recover from the damages during the war.

Not all saw the war in negative terms, the Iranian government-owned Etelaat wrote

"There is not a single school or town that is excluded form happiness of waging war, from drinking the exquisite elixir of death or from the sweet death of the martyr, who dies in order to live forever in paradise."

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Iraq_War

Sounds SO FAMILIAR! SO FAMILIAR!
Are you a big fan of violent movies? This story is more BLOODY and more REALISTIC than any violent movie you have ever watched.
Of course this is just one example of disastrous wars in the history of middle east. Have you ever asked yourself why?

What I learned from this story was the importance of forgetfulness in life!
The amazing capability of our mind; the ability to forget!
I was in grade five when I drew this conclusion and I am proud of myself on my conclusion!

Picture: Victims of chemical weapons.

Splendid!

2008-01-31T20:03:00.000-05:00

"I can resist everything except temptation" Oscar Wilde

In Search of Balance

2008-01-28T22:17:00.000-05:00

There are things that we need and there are things we think we need.
There are things that we feel and there are things we think we feel.
Both are dynamical and subject to change; mostly due to their interactions.

How much one is aware of this difference and how well he or she can manage to keep the balance in this interaction plays an important role in the mental health of the person.

I'm getting too far into my psychological models. I realized it this morning in the bus when I missed my stop!

Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman

2008-01-27T21:06:00.001-05:00

Ads/QCD and the Large N Limit of SU(N)

2008-01-24T20:33:00.000-05:00

I leave the judgment to you. But it is based on the assumption that 3>>1!!! ;)

Nonetheless, as far as I know using a gravitational theory to study QCD not only hasn't disappointed people so far but also has shown to be insightful!

Crazy!

2008-01-20T22:25:00.000-05:00

As I had advertised before the new version of "Nima" is coming!
I am excited!!

سوره ی تماشا

2008-01-13T23:50:00.000-05:00

به تماشا سوگند
و به آغاز کلام
و به پرواز کبوتر از ذهن
واژه ای در قفس است

حرف هایم، مثل یک تکه چمن روشن بود
من به آنان گفتم:
آفتابی لب درگاه شماست
که اگر در بگشایید به رفتار شما می تابد

و به آنان گفتم:
سنگ آرایش کوهستان نیست
همچنانی که فلز، زیوری نیست به اندام کلنگ
در کف دست زمین گوهر ناپیدایی است
که رسولان همه از تابش آن خیره شدند
پی گوهر باشید
لحظه ها را به چراگاه رسالت ببرید

و من آنان، را به صدای قدم پیک بشارت دادم
و به نزدیکی روز، و به افزایش رنگ
به طنین گل سرخ، پشت پرچین سخن های درشت

و به آنان گفتم:
هر که در حافظه ی چوب بیند باغی
صورتش در وزش بیشه ی ابدی خواهد ماند
هر که با مرغ هوا دوست شود
خوابش آرام ترین خواب جهان خواهد بود
آن که نور از سر انگشت زمان برچیند
می گشاید گره ی پنجره ها با آه

زیر بیدی بودیم
برگی از شاخه ی سرم چیدم، گفتم:
چشم را باز کنید، آیتی بهتر از این می خواهید؟
می شنیدم که به هم می گفتند:
سحر می داند، سحر

سر هر کوه رسولی دیدند
ابر انکار به دوش آوردند
باد را نازل کردیم
تا کلاه از سرشان بردارد
خانه هاشان پر داوودی بود
چشمشان را بستیم
دستشان را نرساندیم به سر شاخه ی هوش
جیبشان را پر عادت کردیم
خوابشان را به صدای سفر آینه ها آشفتیم

Confession!

2008-01-13T14:06:00.000-05:00

Which one better describes me?

1) Adventurous and greedy
2) Conservative and content

My guess is that what my closest friends who know me for a very long time will answer is the opposite of what most of my other friends would say! ;)

Fight Scene

2008-01-12T22:16:00.000-05:00

Mahdi: I posted this just for you because I know you are a big fan of this type of movies!

Trouble with Long Range Interactions!

2008-01-12T20:20:00.000-05:00

Believing in holography necessitates a good explanation of how extensive entropy emerges in weak gravitational fields or we are in a BIG trouble of being left with an ill-defined canonical ensemble! This means no thermodynamics! NO CHEMISTRY! NO BIOLOGY! NOTHING!

This is just a restatement of the fact that in the presence of gravity thermodynamic limit doesn't exist! Or if you like you could call it "Jeans instability".

There are two known approaches to go around this.
String Gas: You keep the structure of space-time as a background and play the game of strings. Be careful! The success in this approach mostly boils down to the simple fact that classically a gas of one dimensionally extended objects in three dimensions behaves very similar to a gas of point particles in two dimensions!! You could play this game with cosmic strings as people originally did! DAAAAAAAA!

2nd approach: You might like to say the structure of space-time breaks down! For instance people in loop quantum gravity community tend to think in this direction. It turns out to be EXTREMELY complicated and vague! If there is no background what the hell do the abstract algebraic structures we make mean?

It sounds like independent of the topic of your research in theoretical physics you are always facing the same sort of problems! It could be a good news or a bad news! It is all about the goddamn gravity!!!

You know what? I believe this is exactly the issue of strongly correlated systems! Long range interactions, Ehhh? ;) Could it be more provocative?

Water Serpent by Gustav Klimt

2008-01-12T12:54:00.000-05:00

Fragile!

2008-01-11T13:53:00.000-05:00

Fragile!
Handle with care!

My day

2008-01-10T22:25:00.000-05:00

I came home. It is almost 10 o'clock. It sounds like all I did today was just generating a lot of questions!!!
Questions about
Loop quantum gravity, networks and graphs, experimental quantum gravity
Holographic entropy functions, gravitational instabilities and thermodynamics limit,
Canonical ensemble and non-extensive entropy,
Bunch Davies vacuum, effective field theories and decoherence

My brain is full!
full of what? I don't know!
I just know I like these days.

Games

2008-01-09T21:20:00.000-05:00

If there's something you don't understand; it is terribly annoying and you can't get it out of your head just think of it as a game! Try to learn the rules, respect them and find the joy of playing. Soon you will find the answer!
We all play games!

Emotional Intelligence

2008-01-08T16:23:00.001-05:00

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

Enjoy!

I am NOT a romanticist!

2008-01-04T22:58:00.000-05:00

Spades!

2008-01-02T22:27:00.000-05:00

"Mommy went out into the world to find herself. Both Dad and I realized that it was about time you found yourself when you'd managed to become the mother of a four-year-old boy, so we supported the actual project. I just could never understand why she had to go away to find herself. Why couldn't she sort things out at home, in Arendal- or at least be satisfied with a trip to Kristiansand? My advice to all those who are going to find themselves is: Stay exactly where you are. Otherwise you are in great danger of losing yourself forever."

from the book "The Solitaire Mystery" by Jostein Gaarder

Her Voice

2008-01-01T20:42:00.001-05:00

The wild bee reels from bough to bough
With his furry coat and his gauzy wing,
Now in a lily-cup, and now
Setting a jacinth bell a-swing,
In his wandering;
Sit closer love: it was here I trow
I made that vow,

Swore that two lives should be like one
As long as the sea-gull loved the sea,
As long as the sunflower sought the sun, -
It shall be, I said, for eternity
'Twixt you and me!
Dear friend, those times are over and done;
Love's web is spun.

Look upward where the poplar trees
Sway and sway in the summer air,
Here in the valley never a breeze
Scatters the thistledown, but there
Great winds blow fair
From the mighty murmuring mystical seas,
And the wave-lashed leas.

Look upward where the white gull screams,
What does it see that we do not see?
Is that a star? or the lamp that gleams
On some outward voyaging argosy, -
Ah! can it be
We have lived our lives in a land of dreams!
How sad it seems.

Sweet, there is nothing left to say
But this, that love is never lost,
Keen winter stabs the breasts of May
Whose crimson roses burst his frost,
Ships tempest-tossed
Will find a harbour in some bay,
And so we may.

And there is nothing left to do
But to kiss once again, and part,
Nay, there is nothing we should rue,
I have my beauty, - you your Art,
Nay, do not start,
One world was not enough for two
Like me and you.

Oscar Wilde

Romantic Love at the end of the nineteenth century.

Fear of Love

2007-12-31T19:12:00.000-05:00

"Believe it or not, most of us are brought up in modern culture to fear love. This is a radical statement, so pause a bit and consider it.

How often were you, as a child, criticized and laughed at for expressing your honest feelings? How often are you now used, in our culture of merchandising, as an object to be manipulated in order to satisfy some other person’s desire for profit and power? How often do you shape yourself—with fad diets, implants, cosmetic surgery, workouts, jewelry, tattoos, makeup, hair dye, and clothing—to meet the expectations of someone’s desire?

So what does a person learn from childhood experiences other than that this is a world of competition, strife, and conflict, geared toward the survival of the “fittest”—or in today’s world, the meanest—in which honesty and compassion are foolish weakness?

And how often, in the midst of all this exploitation, has anyone ever done anything for your own growth and welfare, without thought of what could be had in return?

To offer true love—to will the good of another [9]—is to be satisfied with one’s own weakness, humility, and insignificance. Love is an act of will, not something that you “fall” into. You can fall into desperate desire, and you can fall into fatal attraction, but you can’t fall into love. Love is a sacrifice of sorts, and it’s a sacrifice of all that the culture deems valuable. So to offer this real love, or true love, is to stand against the culture—not as a revolutionary or terrorist, but with a humble offering of something better than what others “see” in their blindness.

Often people fear that someone or something they love will be taken from them by someone else. But in true love there is no jealousy. When you have nothing to lose, and nothing to gain, how can you fear a “rival”?

But, because romance is not based in true love, romance is, in technical psychological terms, a game—and to play this game, you must put yourself in competition with everyone else playing the same game. This explains the essence of jealousy: in your fear of losing what you desperately want, you hate any person who might come between you and what you want.

True love, therefore, forsakes the prestige offered by the culture in its illusions. And, when we have been taught from childhood to covet this prestige as our very identity, is it any wonder that we fear love?

Far easier—and safer—isn’t it, to hide behind illusions and games of wealth, power, intrigue, and seduction?"

from: http://www.guidetopsychology.com/sex_love.htm

Posting this on my blog doesn't imply that I agree with all that is said here. It is just that I found it interesting to read. If you want to know my opinion, I think this fear is hell a lot more complicated than this!. All I was trying to do was to make you question yourself if you recognize this fear.

When I finished reading it for the first time I started laughing out loud!!

As soon as I find the time and feel comfortable enough with expressing my ideas I will write a short essay on "Romantic Love".

Menuhin - Perpetual Motion

2007-12-30T16:44:00.000-05:00

On the wall

2007-12-30T11:10:00.000-05:00

"There can be NO information without representation"
"Information is cheaper in wholesale!"
"The least action necessary to transfer one bit is of order planck constant in two dimensional Hilbert spaces"
Written on a piece of paper and stuck to the wall of my office.

Three of the most profound, mind provocative claims I have heard in the past years; all from a paper by Padmanabhan.

ّFeeling fulfilled?

2007-12-27T23:53:00.000-05:00

Psychology rocks!...

Under The Balcony

2007-12-27T19:58:00.000-05:00

O beautiful star with the crimson mouth!
O moon with the brows of gold!
Rise up, rise up, from the odorous south!
And light for my love her way,
Lest her little feet should stray
On the windy hill and the wold!
O beautiful star with the crimson mouth!
O moon with the brows of gold!

O ship that shakes on the desolate sea!
O ship with the wet, white sail!
Put in, put in, to the port to me!
For my love and I would go
To the land where the daffodils blow
In the heart of a violet dale!
O ship that shakes on the desolate sea!
O ship with the wet, white sail!

O rapturous bird with the low, sweet note!
O bird that sits on the spray!
Sing on, sing on, from your soft brown throat!
And my love in her little bed
Will listen, and lift her head
From the pillow, and come my way!
O rapturous bird with the low, sweet note!
O bird that sits on the spray!

O blossom that hangs in the tremulous air!
O blossom with lips of snow!
Come down, come down, for my love to wear!
You will die on her head in a crown,
You will die in a fold of her gown,
To her little light heart you will go!
O blossom that hangs in the tremulous air!
O blossom with lips of snow!

Oscar Wilde

Needs

2007-12-27T10:55:00.000-05:00

If it were up to me to decide, I would add a mandatory course on psychology of love and sex to the list of high-school courses. How could we expect people to discover their psychological and physical needs just based on their experiences?
Even if they could, these experiences could be extremely painful and sometimes irreversibly harmful. Then why not educate people?
A part of this problem has to do with the fact that most of today's societies are not culturally prepared to confront some psychological facts about the nature of love and sex. This would be definitely a revolutionary move and any revolution comes with a price. But if we actually care about the psychological hygiene of our society it is inevitable. Of course, some societies just don't care about it!

News

2007-12-26T10:07:00.001-05:00

Soon a new version of the software "Nima" will be introduced to the market which is announced to have a lot of new features that are absent in the current version "Upgraded Neo-romantic Nima"!. It is advertised that the major changes will be on social relations. It is also claimed to be more user friendly and more "fun"!.
While it is widely believed that this version will sell out more successfully, some experts extremely criticize the fact that "tolerance of conflicts" has been lowered in the new version.
The release date has not been announced yet.

Yalda

2007-12-25T14:34:00.000-05:00

گل در بر و می در کف و معشوق به کام است
سلطان جهانم به چنین روز غلامست

گو شمع میارید در این جمع که امشب
در مجلس ما ماه رخ دوست تمام است

در مذهب ما باده حلال است ولیکن
دور از رخ تو سرو گل اندام حرام است

گوشم همه بر قول نی و نغمه ی چنگ است
چشمم همه بر لعل لب و گردش جام است

در مجلس ما عطر میامیز که ما را
هر لحظه ز گیسوی تو خوش بوی مشام است

از چاشنی قند مگو هیچ و ز شکر
زان رو که مرا از لب شیرین تو کام است

تا گنج غمت در دل دیوانه مقیم است
همواره مرا کوی خرابات مقام است

از ننگ چه گویی که مرا نام ز ننگ است
وز نام چه پرسی که مرا ننگ ز نام است

می خواره و سرگشته و رندیم و نظرباز
وان کس که چو ما نیست در این شهر کدامست

با محتسبم عیب مگویید که او نیز
پیوسته چو ما در طلب عیش مدام است

حافظ منشین بی می و معشوق زمانی
کایام گل و یاسمن و عید صیام است

Hollywood and popular culture

2007-12-25T12:05:00.000-05:00

"What is more important than a beautiful mind is a beautiful heart" from the movie Beautiful Mind

Arts and exact-sciences

2007-12-25T11:50:00.000-05:00

Britannica online defines "Art" as "the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others".

In my opinion theoretical physics is nothing but an artistic form of exact-science!!

In this sense, I think it is not that wrong to compare String theorist to Surrealists!! ;)

PS: The painting is "Our ancient future" by Robert McIntosh

Axiom of Choice!

2007-12-24T18:54:00.000-05:00

Einstein and Islam!!!

2007-12-24T08:20:00.000-05:00

I got this link from Amin.

http://mouood.org/content/view/6004/2/

How dare one could be?!!!

Popular mass culture and last modernists

2007-12-22T10:27:00.000-05:00

Marilyn by Andy Warhol

Regarding the confrontation of Neo-romanticism and pop culture, I decided to post Wikipedia's introduction to the entry on "Pop art":

Pop art is a visual art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in parallel in the late 1950s in the United States. The coinage of the term Pop Art is often credited to British art critic/curator, Lawrence Alloway in an essay titled The Arts and the Mass Media, although the term he uses is "popular mass culture" ^[1] Nevertheless, Alloway was one of the leading critics to defend mass culture and Pop Art as a legitimate art form. Pop art is one of the major art movements of the twentieth century. Characterized by themes and techniques drawn from popular mass culture, such as advertising and comic books, pop art is widely interpreted as either a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism or an expansion upon them. Pop art, like pop music, aimed to employ images of popular as opposed to elitist culture in art, emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any given culture. Pop art at times targeted a broad audience, and often claimed to do so.

Much of pop art is considered very academic, as the unconventional organizational practices used often make it difficult for some to comprehend. Pop art and minimalism are considered to be the last modern art movements and thus the precursors to postmodern art, or some of the earliest examples of postmodern art themselves.

Wikipedia

Eureka!

2007-12-21T19:10:00.000-05:00

After five years, it seems that I've found the missing piece of fact that can explain most of the shortcomings of my models of individual-society interactions. I feel myself close to answering the questions that bugged me for years!

Sadness

2007-12-20T08:47:00.000-05:00

"Sadness is the distance between two happinesses."
inspired by a quotation by Charlie Chaplin