My dislocated waving arm @ coho

I just got my shoulder relocated after two hours of suffer and torture. I was just waving hand for this legendary dude at Stanford’s Coffee House (aka coho) and this simple move completely popped out my left arm! So weird.

It could occur in three different ways and happened to be a posterior type (backward?) which is one of the rarest and according to the doctors the worst type of shoulder dislocation! Now it has been two weeks that Morphy rules my life and honestly I am not used to that.

Since I was a child this left arm knew how to place itself back in (may be forward dislocation) till once that it was dislocated (perhaps backwards) during a seizure and since then relocation was never easy. I’ve had to go to a hospital each of a few times it happened ever since.

Back to the campus scene, as I was shouting out loud after waving hand, students were laughing at me like I am joking. As they realized something wrong is seriously going on, many disappeared. The rest stepped back and looked at me. I dunno why almost no one dared to approach when I asked them to make a phone call. Could involvement bring responsibility? The ambulance came finally. They wanted to take me to a close hospital, but they missed it by one letter and took me to a closed one! Then we have to drive back all the way to the main hospital of the Silicon Valley which was open but super expensive. On the way a nurse was holding my arm in a safe position and upon her request I was dropping numbers like 0, 1, 3 to inform her about my pain level out of ten. A loud 9 on each speed bump of course. She asked why not 10? I said you know I’m humble.

In the hospital they asked me if I let them inject different random stuff into my veins and I asked them not to do it please. They injected them all. I don’t know why they asked. They gave me a shot to relax my muscles plus some general pain-killers and some local pain-relievers too. I don’t remember but I think they injected swine flu vaccine too, since they told me something about it and I didn’t get how it could help relocating a shoulder. If that’s the case, I guess I know what caused my fever and the consequent sickness. I think my blood pressure was taken hundred times and my fingerprint a couple more. And yeah, eventually after I answered a series of basic health questions for the fifteenth time, the doctor decided to pop it back in. They tried three times and it worked the last time. I said I love him. He said he is straight!

I could have fixed it on my own, to avoid a hell of severe pain and an expensive bill. But, even if successful, it would have had its own risks. I know I should be thankful for the nurses, doctors, etc.

p.s. Three months later I settled the case by paying 25% of the bill. It was according to the hospital rule that gives you 75% discount of you don’t have an American valid insurance. The Norwegian insurance system refunded me that 25%. Soon, there will be a surgery here in Norway to fix the problem forever and that will also be completely free!

Masters of Persian Music @ Berkeley

I just attended the Masters of Persian Music performing at University of California, Berkeley.

I have no more doubt about their performing skills, that is awesome. As of the concert during the second half I was bored by Grammy award nominees (for the best traditional world music)! That might be due to their monophonic and repetitive use of the very same melody patterns in Shur scale back and forth (dastgāh-e-Shur is a scale close to medieval Phrygian mode). Once they eventually modulated to minor and I noticed that it suddenly attracted every one’s attention around me. Just to know, my seat was in between of two groups of Americans and Iranians.

Their performance was consistent, harmonic, homogeneous, and professional, but there were really no innovation and creativity going on; no more ways of brain tickling. That was just in a way it used to be in one, two, or even three decades ago.

When it comes to traditional Persian music, my taste seems to be developing. Facing recent innovations in poetry, melody and rhythm as well as new approaches of correlating form and content in Persian music has moved it towards a more complicated and challenging scope. I am not talking about updating instruments, changing the orchestration, hiring polyphony or choice of the scales. These innovations can be accomplished within the exact same set of ensembles.

p.s. Their albums Faryad and Without You is available at Amazon.

Berkeley, CA, October 2008
Nim at Berkeley last year

The Dictator’s Dish

The picture shows today’s huge pro-government protest during the rush hour around Azadi square, Tehran to mark the 31st of Anniversary of Iran’s Revolution.

The information that is not shown on the picture is the that most of the attendees around the Azadi square are opposition demonstrators who didn’t dare to carry green symbols because of the governmental high security control. I talked to two of them on the phone today and they regretted playing the role of two additional grains of rice on the supreme leader’s dish tonight!

As a result of new executions and having anticipated vast number of security forces and militia men, the green movement this time employed a highly compromising “Trojan Horse” strategy: the opposition supporters were to dress and act as pro-government demonstrators to safely join the crowd and then later on turn it into a protest; however, unlike the former clear hijacks they failed accomplishing it but adding more pixels to the image.

I wish the GeoEye service was launched/working or we were somehow aware of that on June 15, 2009 when the opposition took to the streets of Tehran (estimated between 2 to 3 million) and many of us pointed the need for a counting method, which could metaphorically be such a big pot of delicious food for the lovers of democracy and peace.

Three snapshots of the kingdom of kitsch

Morning: I am in Las Vegas at a Terrible hotel or something! It’s a good one though. Now am living for a walk to check out Las Vegas magic scene and its shops. It seems that the diversity is huge and you might get lost among all the opportunities. I shall head back to Cali tomorrow.

Noon: That walk happened to be four hours, partly dangerous. I chilled out with homeless old soldiers asking for cigarettes, African Americans with their very own American accent and a few Mexicans who couldn’t speak English. I saw real poverty and to a certain extent it seemed that they have really got no opportunities to get a better life. So, There is poverty in US. I didn’t know. Quite an experience.

Night: I got to know new card tricks. All gambling business is something and the magic industry is something else. Among these magicians, right in the Nevada desert, you can meet coolest and smartest people you have ever met.

Let’s all be pixels

Introduction: December 7 is the student day in Iran, and like similar events after the disputed election, we expect riots and consequently brutal crackdowns of protesters in many campuses in Tehran as well as many other cities.

At the same date, we students at NTNU, want to make a global image in order to support the Iranian students’ peaceful movement. Many universities around the world will join this program to support non-violent GREEN movement and to show their solidarity with Iranian students and teachers who are in prison due to their peaceful democratic demonstration. We invite you all to join others to be a pixel in this global image!

Besides, there will be a brief discussion panel and live videos of crackdown will be shown.

[nggallery id=2]

  • Time: Monday – December 7, 2009 (16:00 to 18:00)
  • Location: NTNU, Gløshaugen Campus, Central Building, Lecture hall S1 (confirmed)

Notes if you join:

  • Every piece of green that you wear (or bring) will sharpen our image!
  • Be creative! Wear GREEN in solidarity (shirts, wristbands, ribbons, balloons, …)
  • Hold signs such as : “WE SUPPORT YOU”, “WE ARE IRANIANS”, “WE ARE WITH YOU”, etc.
  • Norwegian flags, NTNU logo, etc, are more then welcome

The end result will be a video with all the photo shoots combined, which will be shared on Youtube and sent to Iranian students back home.

Although these global actions do not change anything overnight, but they do render an immeasurable service to the morale of those who are struggling for the democratic project within Iran.

Historical background:

Iranian government stole votes of its own people and announced the election results upside down. The people didn’t give up their right. They protested peacefully and as a result they were killed, imprisoned and raped. They stood by their rights. They exposed themselves to all these dangers and through that they presented their movement to the rest of the world. Now, Iranians not only do not have right to protest peacefully, but also after the supreme leader’s religious dictum on May 19 they might easily get shot by the government’s agents while taking part in any kind of riot, however they still take any opportunity, ceremony and event to express their movement and to eventually take their votes back. Dec 7 known as the student day in Iran is one of those events in a row.

The student day goes back to 55 years ago. During the Shah era, since Iranian police agents fired and killed three students (two marxists and one liberal) inside the campus of Tehran University, the day 7th of December has been recognized as an official day in Iranian calendar called the Student Day. Since then, before and after the revolution, Iranian students, both secular and religious, celebrate this anniversary, protesting against the dictatorship and policies of the government.

Definition of the Master Thesis (2) – Draft

Title: Modeling human auditory synchronization behavior based on EEG data

Student: –
Supervisor: –
Co-supervisors: Nima Darabi, PhD at Q2S / Peter Svensson, Professor, IET and Q2S
Semester: Spring 2010

An overall view: While dancing, performing or listening to a rhythmic music, we are synchronizing our reactions based on the auditory stimuli. The characteristics of such an action depend on how we use our short-term auditory memory, as the ability to recall something heard very recently. Every suggested synchronization model should take the role of this memory into account. The traditional way of understanding this memory function is analysis of the recorded behavior of synchronous cooperative subjects such as processing of their produced sound signals. In addition to this, the measurement of the electrical brain activity might be a very useful source, assigning to the relative sound signals and provided by EEG’s good temporal resolution.

The Assignment: In this suggested project, We will do experiments in which subjects passively listen to hand claps, in order to find out how that translates to EEG activity. We will set up some well-defined and simple subjective experiments with auditory stimuli and use quantitative EEG methods (mathematical measurement of aspects of the EEG signal) to analyze the provided information. The process should be passive given the circumstances such as EEG sensitivity to body movements and their results are supposed to address these questions:

  • How the brain electrical activity is influenced by passive rhythm perception?
  • Which temporal structures are human perceivable as rhythm?
  • How fast the auditory stimuli can be traced in the electrical brain activity?
  • How this can be changed by different patterns and tempos?
  • How much is this individual or training dependent?
  • How we can explore memory aspects of human rhythmic and musical behavior using EEG?
  • when experimenting with delays between handclapping performers, and
    we ask them to keep the tempo stable, it sounds bad to them but they can keep the tempo. On average, though, people compensate not enough so the tempo always decreases. Why don’t they compensate completely?

We also need to figure out the extent to which asynchrony is perceived. We will come up with a model that describes the behavior of a clapper. One aspect is the perception of the other clapper and the perception of one’s self: EEG might be able to show when a situation is unusual which might be related to asynchrony.

In this case we just have subject listen to a bunch of pre-recorded hand claps. Do an experiment with active clapping; subsequently, compare the EEG data and find any differences. Here E(t), B(t) and A(t) stand for Ear(t), Brain(t) and Arm(t). Brain (T) comes from EEG data related to hearing of stimuli and will help us to understand more about the processing of perceived stimuli (synchrony check / prediction performed by subject), and movement of arms, respectively.

This study finally aims at defining some memory/inertia-related parameters as a measure of strategy taken by the performers in a musical collaboration/synchronization process.

Oppskrift for persisk mat: Gheymeh

En av de mest vanlige matrettene i Iran er kombinasjonen av ris og stew. Stew som (Khoresh pĂĽ persisk) kanskje heter stuinger pĂĽ norsk, er en kombinasjon av bønner, erter, grønnsaker, kjøtt, og krydder kokt i vann i lang tid. Det er veldig forkjellige typer av “stew”ene i persisk mat og nĂĽ skal jeg beskrive en av dem som heter Gehymeh:

Maten er laget av Malene Heidenstrøm Hauge.

Gheymeh stew:

Ingredienser: (for 6 porsjoner)

  • lam eller biff, 750 gram
  • erter, 250 gram (en spesiell type erter som heter split pea)
  • 2-3 løk
  • poteter, 500 gram
  • ½ kopp matolje
  • tomatpure, 2-3 teskjeer
  • 4-5 tørkete lime
  • salt og pepper
  • gurkemeie og paprika, 1 teskje

Instruksjoner:

  • Før koking, legg split-ertene i varmt vann i 2 eller 3 timer, etterpĂĽ tøm ut vannet.
  • Kutt løkene i smĂĽbiter og stek i matolje i en kasserolle til den blir gylden.
  • Vask og skjĂŚr kjøttet og stek dem i den samme kasserollen som løken i 10-15 minutter.
  • Tilsett 3 glass vann og la det koket langsomt i en time.
  • Da Tilsett erter, salt, pepper, krydder, tomatpure og tørkete limene. Fortsett ĂĽ koke alt pĂĽ svak varme.  Tilsett mer vann om nødvendig.
  • Vask potetene og skjĂŚr i smĂĽbiter og stek dem i en stekepanne med olje i 20-30 minutter.
  • Server denne deilige maten i Ildfast form og legg potetene over.
  • Spis med hvit persisk ris:

Persisk ris:

Persisk ris bør ikke vÌre klebrig!

Ingredienser: (for 6 porsjoner)

  • 500 g langkornet ris eller basmati
  • 6 spiseskjeer matolje
  • 1 spiseskje salt

Instruksjoner:

  • Kok risen i varmt kokt vann i 15 minutter med salt og olje.
  • EtterpĂĽ tøm ut vannet og vask risen med kaldt van.
  • Hell tre spiseskje matolje i en kasserolle. Ta i risen uten vann og etterpĂĽ hell tre spiseskje olje over risen.
  • Før du serverer risen, legg 10-20 spiseskjeer av persisk safran i varmt vann, slik at det blir gult.
  • Server hvitris og legg gul ris over.

Vel bekomme!