“The Top 10 Iranian Movies to Netflix This Weekend”

I have been MIA for a while, and plan on returning back. There is a lot of interesting stuff being talked about these days, such as President Obama’s Cairo speech, and although I know no one really reads this blog, I might post some comments on it soon. In the meantime, in honor of the completey free and fair elections in Iran this week, enjoy this article written by my friend, Abel Kerevel, about Iranian films.

Go Celtics!

That’s it. That’s all I want to say. And obviously that the Egyptian government is stupid for slaughtering all those pigs.

Who’s Disgusting?

The Celtics are, that’s who.

“It’s Raining Men (who are married to each other)!”

“A Gaythering Storm”

I am glad the ridiculous original anti-gay marriage add got this much attention. Frank Rich has a good piece about it here.

Long Live KG

We should all be rooting for KG to make a quick recovery so he doesn’t have to watch the games from the locker room. KG is THE man.

Garnett chooses to watch games from the locker room rather than the bench when he is injured because it frustrates him to not be able to contribute.

That’s heart. Go Celts.

Joseph Nye on the Ivory Towers

I really liked this piece from Joseph Nye of “soft power” fame in the Washington Post. I remember reading an article during my undergrad by Lisa Anderson, now the provost of AUC, about how academics and policy-makers need to do a better job of working together. Here are some quotes:

Scholars are paying less attention to questions about how their work relates to the policy world, and in many departments a focus on policy can hurt one’s career. Advancement comes faster for those who develop mathematical models, new methodologies or theories expressed in jargon that is unintelligible to policymakers.

Yet too often scholars teach theory and methods that are relevant to other academics but not to the majority of the students sitting in the classroom before them.

I definitely think this can go both ways, and policy-makers sometimes ignore academics for the wine-sipping, elbow-patch wearing snobs that they are. Academics complain so often about American policy, which they have a right to do, and which they should do. But how about using that Harvard PhD to actually help the US make better policy decisions?

Stress, yes!

Stress may not be the one-way ticket to an early grave that most of us assume. In fact, it could do wonders for the immune system and even keep cancers at bay

Ha! Not that I believe everything I read in the news, but screw you to all those people who are always telling me to relax!

Egyptian Wine

Thanks to Google Alerts for this crucial bit of info. Actually, it’s pretty cool.

Deep inside the tomb of Scorpion I (no relation to the Rock), scientists discovered Egypt’s oldest wines.
And now it appears the 5,000-year-old wines were spiked with natural medicines—centuries before the practice was thought to exist in Egypt, researchers say.

April 6 As Seen by Egyptian Newspapers

The Arabist has a cool, albeit brief post (not that I don’t write brief posts ever…) about how Egyptian newspapers viewed April 6.

Lend for Peace

I want to second Friday in Cairo’s shout out and support for the Lend for Peace micro-financing program in the West Bank (also full disclosure, one of the founders is a friend of mine).

Check out Friday in Cairo’s blog post about it here, and here is the direct link to the site, http://www.lendforpeace.org/.