The TV pilot Funny in Farsi, which follows an Iranian immigrant’s life in the United States, will be going into production, ABC officials say.
The comedy pilot is based on Firoozeh Dumas’s novel Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America, Variety.com reported Friday. Dumas was born in Iran but grew up in Newport Beach, California.
ABC Studios will produce the TV version. Nastaran Dibai and Jeffrey Hodes have been brought on board as the executive producer and to write the pilot.
Variety also reported CBS has picked p the pilot The Good Wife from CBS Paramount Network TV. The new Scott Free Productions pilot will follow the wife of a disgraced politician who takes a legal job in the wake of her husband’s political disaster.
Last week, the tabloid News of the World published a picture of swimmer Michael Phelps using a bong to smoke marijuana at a University of South Carolina party. By smoking pot, Phelps set a wrong example for his younger fans. He should have known that smoking pot has several adverse affects such as getting munchies and losing corporate endorsements or one’s celebrity status. However, Phelps’ most appalling action was apologizing for smoking pot. According to several studies, nearly one out of two Americans and most college students have smoked marijuana. This includes President Barack Obama and his two predecessors, Justice Clarence Thomas, Newt Gingrich and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Most people who smoke marijuana do recreationally, similar to those who drink alcohol.
Rather than apologizing, Phelps should admit that like millions of other successful Americans, he smokes marijuana in moderation and evidently it has not affected his athletic performance. He should speak out against the failed war on drugs and the absurd and hypocritical laws that in 2007, resulted in the arrest of more than 700,000 Americans just for the possession of marijuana.
Hooman Hedayati
Government and Middle Eastern studies senior
The printed edition of the Economist Magazine “The World in 2009” edition has an advertisement by Istithmar World, a Dubai (UAE) company that presents Al-Khwārizmī (Kharazmi in Persian) as an Arab mathematician. Al-Khwārizmī was a Muslim mathematician and astronomer whose important work includes the concepts of Algebra and Algorithm. Unfortunately Al-Khwārizmī was not Arab as the ad claims. The origins of his life are unknown and we know very little about it. However as his name indicates, he was from the province of Khwarezm (contemporary Khiva, Uzbekistan), which was then part of the Greater Khorasan (eastern part of Persia) during the Abbasid empire. We do know that he used to work as a scholar in Baghdad which then became the center of scientific studies after Islamic invasion of Persia. But this does not make him an Arab mathematician.
The following is my first attempt at Mehdi Akhavan Sales’ (1929-2000) famous modernist poem titled “Winter.” The Persian text and also the English translation of this poem can be found in “Persian Listening” by Michael C. Hillmann (2008 Dunwoody Press).
The TV pilot 