Madison Central High School
Mark of Excellence
Mark of Excellence
Nazila Fathi covered Iran for The New York Times until she feared her arrest was imminent. She then fled her homeland. Her new book, The Lonely War, tells of the challenges of reporting on Iran.
Listen to an NPR interview with Fathi: http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/12/11/369833171/the-risks-rewards-and-mysteries-of-reporting-from-iranOn May 8, 2013, world-famous political satirist Jon Stewart of The Daily Show held a discussion about censorship and power in Iran, followed by a lively Q&A, at an event hosted by the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the PEN American Center. In conversation with Iranian-Canadian film director Maziar Bahari and CPJ's Executive Director Joel Simon, Stewart explored issues ranging from incarceration and torture to foreign policy to free speech and creativity under repression.
The discussion followed the New York premier of director Maziar Bahari's film Forced Confessions. Watch the full discussion, including introduction and Q&A, in this video!
Author: Ray Takeyh, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the CFR
"The challenge of Iran has never been greater, and the ability of the United States to manage the surging power of the Islamist state will go a long way toward stabilizing the Middle East," says CFR Senior Fellow Ray Takeyh in Guardians of the Revolution: Iran and the World in the Age of the Ayatollahs. Takeyh was recently senior adviser to the special adviser for the Gulf and Southwest Asia at the U.S. Department of State. In this book, he explains that the task at hand is to create a situation where Iran sees benefit in limiting its ambitions. "Dialogue, compromise, and commerce, as difficult as they may be, are a means of providing Tehran with a set of incentives to adhere to international norms and commit to regional stability."
Tracing the course of Iranian policy since the 1979 revolution, Takeyh explores four distinct periods in his book: the revolutionary era of the 1980s; the death of Ayatollah Khomeini and the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1989; the "reformist" period from 1997 to 2002 under President Mohammad Khatami; and the policies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei. From this account, Takeyh illustrates that Iran's policies are, in reality, a series of compromises between conservatives and moderates.
AMAZON: http://www.amazon.com/Guardians-Revolution-Iran-World-Ayatollahs/dp/0195327845/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241207446&sr=8-1
Published on Mar 4, 2013
Masha Gessen
"MIT’s Erik Brynjolfsson says we are living in as significant a moment as the first industrial revolution, but the smart machines won’t lead to utopia without good public policy.
Brynjolfsson and colleague Andrew McAfee say they were confused by what they saw happening — an age in which thinking machines suddenly got much, much better. They asked themselves, how did this happen, and what were the consequences?"
Published on Jan 8, 2014
If you've ever used Google, Netflix, Facebook, or Amazon (and we're guessing that you have), then you've come into contact with algorithms. In fact, it's guaranteed that your life has been impacted by algorithms, even in ways you're unaware of (assuming you INTERNET... which, again, we're guessing that you have...) The point is, the importance of algorithms in today's world cannot be overstated, and their role has been the focus of much discussion- how they're shaping our lives, for better or for worse. But, how far does the algorithmic rabbit hole go, could their influence even have spiritual correlations?! Watch the episode and find out!
Data is becoming the oil of the information age; a raw material and the foundation of new goods and services. We can tap it because society is rendering into a data format things that never were before, from our friendships (think Facebook) to our whispers (think Twitter) to the way our car engines grunt before a breakdown. It took a decade and billions of dollars to decode the first human genome ten years ago. Today, that same amount of DNA is sequenced in a day. The implications are as huge as the datasets themselves.
As we collect and crunch more data, the good news is that we can do extraordinary things: fight disease, reduce climate change, unlock mysteries of science. The bad news is that it raises a host of worries for which society is unprepared. What does it mean if big data denies us a bank loan or considers us unfit for a surgical operation, but we can’t learn the explicit reasons because the variables that went in were so myriad and complex? How do you regulate an algorithm?
Join Viktor Mayer-Schönberger of the Oxford Internet Institute and Kenneth Cukier of The Economist on a fascinating journey to the world of big data. The book will surprise you, amuse you, anger you and inspire you. In the end, it may even just change the way you look at everything." www.big-data-book.com
Uploaded on Jun 14, 2009
In response to the Twitter of Mousavi:
"EVERYONE: Tonight at 9pm Iran time from rooftops: "Death to Dictator"."