Behrooz Parhami's Blog & Books Page
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Behrooz Parhami Home & Contact Behrooz Parhami's Blog & Books Page Page last updated on 2014 December 31 Curriculum Vitae Research This page was created in March 2009 as an outgrowth of the section entitled "Books Read or Heard" in my personal page. The rapid expansion of the list of Computer arithmetic books warranted devoting a separate page to it. Given that the book introductions and reviews constituted a form of personal blog, I decided to title Parallel processing this page "Blog & Books," to also allow discussion of interesting topics Fault tolerance unrelated to books from time to time. Lately, non-book items (such as political Broader research news, tech news, puzzles, oddities, trivia, humor, art, and music) have formed the vast majority of the entries. Research history List of publications Entries in each section appear in reverse chronological order. Teaching Blog entries for 2014 Archived blogs for 2012-13 ECE1 Freshman sem Archived blogs up to 2011 ECE154 Comp arch ECE252B Comp arith Blog Entries for 2014 2014/12/31 (Wed.): Here are nine items of potential interest to close the year. ECE252C Adv dig des (1) Freedom of the press ECE254B Par proc worldwide in 2014: As ECE257A Fault toler assessed by Reporters Without Borders. Student supervision (2) Quote of the day: "Life Math + Fun! isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating Textbooks yourself." ~ George Bernard Shaw Computer arithmetic (3) The last four death- Parallel processing row inmates in Maryland Dependable comp will get their sentences reduced to life: Outgoing Comp architecture Governor Martin O'Malley Other books has announced plans to commute the sentences Service before leaving office. (4) Snow in Southern California: We never have a white Christmas in our neck of the woods, but some snow Professional activities did arrive in SoCal mountain areas to spice up our New-Year celebrations. Academic service (5) Beachy Head Lighthouse in East Sussex, England. [Photo] Community service (6) Spacecraft to become first to orbit two unexplored alien worlds: After spending over a year orbiting protoplanet Vesta (which has shown signs of water), NASA's Dawn space probe is now heading for its March Industrial consulting 6, 2015, rendezvous with dwarf planet Ceres. (7) How the Himalayas were formed: Several landmasses of the ancient continent of Pangaea separated Files & Documents from it, moving, over many millions of years, to where we know today as the Americas, Antarctica, Australia, Useful Links and India. As the northward-moving Indian landmass collided with the much larger Eurasia and pushed into it, the ground had nowhere to go but up, which created all of the world's peaks exceeding 8000m in elevation and Personal some 100 other mountains of height 7200m or more. This also explains the mountainous geography of Afghanistan. Interestingly, Iran, parts of Pakistan, and several other countries in the region were under water at Blog & books the time, later emerging, with the Caspian Sea being the only remnant of the ocean that covered them. http://www.ece.ucsb.edu/~parhami/pers_blog.htm[12/31/2014 11:52:54 PM] Behrooz Parhami Favorite quotations [Animation] (8) Great tips for using your time and enjoying the results: I resolve to remember these 5 tips as I journey Poetry through 2015. * Schedule things that make you happy. * Time perception is everything. * Optimize the time Pet peeve you have. * You are how you spend your time. * Big picture—You get ~30K days at birth. Virtual retirement (9) My top-10 list: The year's end always brings top ten lists of people (alive or dead), places, events, songs, books, and everything else under the sun. I am getting dizzy as the lists from various sources appear on my CE Program newsfeed and on every news and entertainment site I visit. Time magazine has published a few such lists on its Web site. But the most important top-10 list for each person is the list of things for which s/he is grateful. ECE Department Here is mine, as I move into 2015: My health; My children; My extended family; My friends; My teachers over the years; My students (current and past); My adopted country; My profession; My job; My home. UCSB Engineering UC Santa Barbara 2014/12/30 (Tue.): Here are two items of potential interest on culture and literary history. (1) In defense of Golshifteh Farahani: This is the second time that the appearance of a nude photo of the Iranian-born actress Golshifteh Frarahani has caused a furor in the Iranian community, including among those who have lived in diaspora for decades. There are opinions on both sides of the issue (personal freedom vs. dishonoring the Iranian culture), although those who scold the actress vastly outnumber her supporters. Several commentators have pointed out that Iranians tend to politicize every issue, in part to compensate for the lack of political and personal freedoms. A prime example in support of the view just cited is the politicization, by both the people and the regime, of the recent death of pop singer Morteza Pashaei. Not one person holding political power in Iran has been chosen freely by the people; many were appointed to their positions and some were "elected" by people as the least-bad among a set of horrible alternatives presented to them. Farahani's critics view her as a representative of the Iranian culture, the same culture that forced her to leave the country because she was stifled in her creative work and restricted in the kinds of films she could choose. The issues did not pertain to nudity, as no director/producer dares to touch that in Iran; they were mostly related to social ills, particularly about how women are treated by their families and the society at large. Now that Farahani has become a successful artist in exile, she is suddenly burdened with representing a culture that abhors strong, independent women like her. Even setting aside the fact that culture both shapes and is shaped by people, thus making some taboo-breakers positive forces in transforming the culture, it is unclear which aspect of the Iranian culture Farahani has supposedly dishonored. Is it the part of the current (archaic, Arab-influenced) culture that belittles women, punishes them, and even throws acid in their faces for the slightest deviation from government-sanctioned clothing? Is it the culture that denies civil rights, including education, to some religious minorities? Is it the culture that imprisons and tortures political dissidents, and goes as far as raping them, in state prisons? Is it the culture that keeps quiet when attorneys who dare to defend political dissidents and human-rights activists are themselves jailed and disbarred? Farhani does not represent the Iranian culture any more than you or I do. We are each individuals living our lives by taking culture, personal values, aspirations, and opportunities into account. Our choices can be judged by our friends or others who are close to us, but they should not be viewed as templates for anyone. [P.S.: I would have liked to include with my post the original magazine cover photo of Farahani (with no censorship) and be able to put the equal sign with no question mark at the center of the photo. In the final analysis, I decided that some readers may be offended by the nude photo. In fact, deeming photos of shirtless women offensive while putting photos of shirtless men everywhere, including in social-media posts that carry overt sexual connotations, is not unique to the Iranian culture, but that's a topic for a different discussion.] (2) The (legal) campaign to prove Shakespeare didn't exist: Doubting the existence of the literary genius isn't new. This fascinating Newsweek on-line article sheds some light on the reasons for doubting his existence, based on a new book, Shakespeare in Court, which uses a mock-trial format to sift the evidence. A coalition is considering legal action against Shakespeare Birthplace Trust for all the money they have taken under false pretenses. "Not a single poem or letter or play has ever been found in his own hand. We have just six shaky signatures. His will mentions no books, plays or anything else to suggest the balding Stratford businessman was also a writer. His personality, love interests, movements are all a total mysery. The documents relating to his life are all of a legal nature. Nobody ever recognised Shakespeare as a writer during his lifetime and when he died, in 1616, no one seemed to notice. Not a single letter refers to the great author's passing at the time." http://www.ece.ucsb.edu/~parhami/pers_blog.htm[12/31/2014 11:52:54 PM] Behrooz Parhami [P.S.: When I posted this story on Facebook, a well-informed reader commented at length that the claims are too bizzare to be worth a reply, as any reply may seem to legitimize them; "it's like debating with the people who think we didn't land on the moon," he wrote. Shakespeare's contemporaries did give credit to him, one rival going as far as to call him "a poet for our time and for all time." Shakespear's writings are full of "howlers and mistakes that no great aristocrat would have made." Those mistakes are all in irrelevant facts and figures and thus do not undermine the brilliance of the work.] 2014/12/29 (Mon.): Here are eight items of potential interest. (1) Quote of the day: "When the sun is shining, I can do anything; no mountain is too high, no trouble too difficult to overcome." ~ Wilma Rudolph (2) To launch a new ship: I had seen ships launched into water lengthwise, with the ceremonial champagne bottles broken on their sterns.