text:
Changing our eating habits could make a big difference to climate change, according to a vegan organisation.
Visitors attending the Loving Hut stand at Qatar Sustainability Expo have been sampling meals ranging from "steak" to "sushi", with one big difference – none of them contain meat.
Loving Hut is a vegan organisation that uses products such as soy protein to replace meat. Its founders believe that a simple way to reduce climate change is to change your diet.
The idea began at COP15/CMP5 in Copenhagen, when a group of vegans got together to promote their views. Two years ago Loving Hut was born and the vegan restaurant chain now has more than 200 outlets in more than 30 countries.
Brenda Wang, the executive director of Loving Hut USA, said that attitudes towards vegan food were changing. She said: "If you think that in two years we have been able to open more than 200 restaurants in more than 30 countries, then I think the world is ready. Every COP we go to the first question people ask is, 'What does food have to do with climate change?' and then when we talk to them about it, the second question they ask is 'Why did it take so long for this idea to get here?' "
At 5.30pm on Wednesday Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop, the executive director of the World Preservation Foundation, will give a talk at Qatar Sustainability Expo, at Doha Exhibition Centre, about how veganism can help tackle climate change.
He said there are two parts to the solution. The first is that reducing short-lived climate pollutants - such as methane, black carbon and tropospheric ozone, which are caused by grassland fires and livestock - can slow global warming. The second, long-term fix, is to stop eating meat and return the world's grazing pastures to forests, savannah and native grasslands.
He said: "People are desperate for solutions. It is a radical, but a natural solution. A lot of people are becoming vegans but most people are very resistant to this idea. However the tide is turning and I believe that within a decade we will see desperate measures being looked at. I believe that humans are slow but they are not stupid, so they will look at this even though it seems a way out idea now. It is safe, it is effective, it is low cost. It means changing what we eat but if changing what we eat can save the world we will do it."Source:http://www.cop18.qa/news/singlestory.aspx?id=168


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Palram invests extensively in the education of and improving the skills of its employees. The company encourages excellence and their professional development. Palram College was established to assist in achieving this objective. It is the corporate entity overseeing the organization of education within the company and overseeing the advancement of work related skills at the various levels.
There are a number of levels of study at The College:
Additional Programs Overseen by Palram College:

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Getting fair shares for a shared data plan is always disaster! Because it is not a simple +/- but also there are a lot of overheads included inside the charges such as tax and extras, and also AT&T doesn't divide the data charge and overage among the lines but only one line!
The attached EXCEL file contains the details of the processing of the separate shares of a 13-line AT&T data shared plan. To start with it, you should fill out the yellow boxes at the bottom of the file. You can get help from "View my bill" page at AT&T website. The instructions can be as follows:
- Fill out total bill balance (Total), number of lines (T#), total amount of data (TData), AT&T base charge per line (ATT Base) by looking at "View my bill" page at AT&T website.
- Fill out insurances (Insurance column) and installments (Installment column) again by by looking at "View my bill" page at AT&T website.
- If any line has an extra charge (for international calls, etc.), calculate extra charge by subtracting ATT_BASE from the actual balance in front of the line. [Note: AT&T charges one line for the whole data. So don't try to consider it as an extra charge.]
- If the plan had a data overage, you can fill out the used data by each line in Data column (shown as yellow) from "Check Usage" page at AT&T website. A user-defined function (UDF), UDF(x)=ROUNDUP(x*(1+SIGN(x))/2,0); x is the distance of the line data usage from the mean data usage, has been used to compute the data overage share among the lines.
Now, you can verify the results:
- Green balances shown in ATT Website column should be equal with the balances in "View my bill" page at AT&T website.
- Also you can verify the overpay balance, calculated balance, etc.
Finally the fair shares would be in "Separate" column.


text:
Dorathy N. McDonald Allen (1910–1990)
Dorathy N. McDonald Allen was the first woman to serve in the Arkansas Senate. She was elected to fill the unexpired term of her husband, Senator Tom Allen, after his death in 1963. She was reelected in 1966 and 1970 without opposition, serving until January 1975.
Dorathy McDonald was born in Helena (Phillips County) on March 10, 1910, to Dora and Jack McDonald. Her father was lumberman and sawmill owner, and her mother was a homemaker; she had four siblings. She was educated in public schools and at Sacred Heart Academy in Helena. Her mother died the same year McDonald graduated from high school. Due to the financial state of her family, college became impossible, so she took a business course and acquired a county job. Soon thereafter, McDonald became society editor of the Helena World, and she later worked in the news department and the advertising department of the Eastern Arkansas Record.
She married Tom Allen in May 1941 and moved to Brinkley (Monroe County), where they owned and published the Brinkley weekly newspaper the Citizen. She worked with her husband editing and publishing the Citizen, the Monroe County Sun at Clarendon (Monroe County), and the Woodruff County Democrat at Cotton Plant (Woodruff County). In 1944, her husband ran for the Arkansas House of Representatives and later became a state senator, a post he held until his death from cancer on October 31, 1963; they had no children.
In 1944, Allen became affiliated with the Miss Arkansas Pageant, then an amateur affair; she chaperoned the Brinkley contestant to the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City, where she saw how pageants were professionally conducted. As Allen recalled, "The sponsors of the Arkansas contest had not the slightest comprehension of what our girl was going to have to face in Atlantic City." She returned to Arkansas and became director of the pageant. Prior to 1945, the pageant was sponsored by the Eastern Arkansas Young Men's Club, and upon Allen's return, she told the men's clubs that they needed to do it right or not at all. Her leadership in that area resulted in her being dubbed the "Mother of the Miss Arkansas Pageant." Allen held the 1945 Miss Arkansas pageant on the football field in Brinkley.
On July 28, 1964, Allen ran in a special election for the Senate seat in District 26—which included Monroe, Lee, Arkansas, and Phillips counties—that was made vacant by her husband's death. At the time of her first campaign, she had been a member and leader of several associations, including the Governor's Advisory Committee on Mental Retardation, past president of the Arkansas Hospital Association, charter member and first president of the Brinkley Business and Professional Women's Club, and member and past president of Arkansas Press Women. She won with 52.2 percent of the vote (7,567 votes) to become the first woman ever to serve in the Arkansas Senate. She was reelected without opposition in 1966 and 1970, serving from 1964 to 1975.
Allen's first floor speech was in opposition to a proposed investigation of the Arkansas Children's Colony, a project that she had long lobbied for establishing and furthering, and the proposal failed. In this first term, she sponsored the PKU (Phenylketonuria) Act for newborn testing of this genetic disorder. During the 1967 session, Allen put forward legislation to exempt mussel shells from the severance tax, which passed unanimously in both houses, and she and state Senator Joe Lee Anderson of Helena sponsored an appropriation of $500,000 to pay off the debt on the Helena bridge over the Mississippi River so that the Arkansas Department of Transportation would end the toll charges; after passage by both houses, however, it was vetoed by Governor Winthrop Rockefeller.
In 1969, Allen sponsored legislation authorizing school districts and colleges to create early-childhood-development demonstration projects. Her bill directing the state Publicity and Parks Commission to develop a plan to create a Louisiana Purchase State Park passed but was vetoed by Governor Rockefeller. During the 1971 session, she sponsored a non-binding resolution to end the Highway Commission's toll charges over the Helena bridge, and the tolls ended soon afterward. That same year, she became chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Legislative Affairs.
In 1974, legislative reapportionment created a district of two counties, Monroe and Arkansas, with parts of Woodruff, St. Francis, and Prairie. Allen decided not to run for reelection. About an hour after the ticket closed that year for the Democratic Party primaries, a fire destroyed the second floor of her newspaper, the Citizen.
Allen worked as a Senate clerk from 1975 to 1976 and remained active in her church and in associations until her death on May 12, 1990.
For additional information:
"Dorathy Allen of Brinkley, Ex-State Senator." Arkansas Democrat. May 14, 1990, p. 4B.
McGaughey, Carroll. "Mrs. Tom Allen—Those Who Join Also Work." Arkansas Gazette. March 11, 1956, p. 5F.
Murphy, Sara. "Distaff Note: The Ladies of the Legislature." Arkansas Gazette. January 29, 1967, p. 5E.
"Two Traditions Come to an End." Arkansas Gazette. April 24, 1974, p. 1B.
Lindsley Armstrong Smith
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Last Updated: 01/03/2018


text:
Frequent Links
Iranian peoples
|Template:Image array
|Total population
|210–235 million[1] Communities majorly in Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey, Tajikistan, Pakistan and also Georgia, Russia, Syria, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Bahrain, Oman,[2] Kuwait,[3] Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Israel, China (Xinjiang), United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, India, Germany, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Canada and the United States.
|Regions with significant populations
|Iran and Iranian Plateau, Anatolia, South Asia, Central Asia, the Caucasus and as immigrant communities in North America and Western Europe.
|Iranian languages, a branch of the Indo-European family
|Majority Sunni Islam and sizable Shia Islam, Sufism, Irreligion, Agnosticism, Atheism, Orthodox Christianity,[4] Zoroastrianism, Georgian Orthodox, Nestorians, Judaism, Bahá'í, Protestantism, Catholicism, Paganism
|Related ethnic groups
|Other Indo-Iranian-speaking groups
The Iranian peoples[5] or Iranic peoples[6][7][8] are a diverse Indo-European ethno-linguistic group that comprise the speakers of Iranian languages.[9][10]
Proto-Iranians are believed to have emergenced a separate branch of the Indo-Iranians in Central Asia the mid 2nd millennium BC.[11][12] At their peak of expansion in the mid 1st millennium BC, the Iranian cultural area stretched across the Iranian Plateau and the entire Eurasian Steppe from the Great Hungarian Plain in the west to the Ordos Plateau in the east.[13] The Western Iranian Persian Empires came to dominate much of the ancient world at this time, leaving an important cultural legacy, while the Eastern Iranian nomads of the steppe played a decisive role in the development of eurasian nomadism and the Silk Route.[11] Ancient Iranian peoples include the Medes, Scythians, Massagetaes, Sarmatians, Parthians, Alans, Bactrians, Sogdians, Khwarezmians, and other people of Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Iranian Plateau.
In the 1st millennium AD their area of settlement was reduced as a result of Germanic, Slavic, Turkic and Mongol expansions. The Iranian peoples comprise the present day Persians, Tajiks, Lurs, Azeris, Pashtuns, Kurds, Balochs, Ossetians, and Pamiris. Their current distribution spreads across the Iranian plateau, and stretches from the Caucasus in the north to the Persian Gulf in the south, and from Xinjiang in the east to eastern Turkey in the west[14] – a region that is sometimes called the "Iranian cultural continent", or Greater Iran by some scholars, and represents the extent of the Iranian languages and significant influence of the Iranian peoples, through the geopolitical reach of the "Greater Iran".[15]
- 1 Name
- 2 History and settlement
- 3 Demographics
- 4 Culture
- 5 Genetics
- 6 Gallery
- 7 See also
- 8 References
- 9 External links
The term Iranian is derived from the Old Iranian ethnical adjective Aryana which is itself a cognate of the Sanskrit word Arya.[16][17] The name Iran is from Aryānām; lit: "(Land) of the Aryans".[18][19] The old Proto-Indo-Iranian term Arya, per Thieme meaning "hospitable", is believed to have been one of the self-referential terms used by the Aryans, at least in the areas populated by Aryans who migrated south from Central Asia. Another meaning for Aryan is "noble". In the late part of the Avesta (Vendidad 1), one of their homelands was referred to as Airyanem Vaejah. The homeland varied in its geographic range, the area around Herat (Pliny's view) and even the entire expanse of the Iranian plateau (Strabo's designation).[19]
The academic usage of the term Iranian is distinct from the state of Iran and its various citizens (who are all Iranian by nationality and thus popularly referred to as Iranians) in the same way that Germanic peoples is distinct from Germans. Many citizens of Iran are not necessarily "Iranian peoples" by virtue of not being speakers of Iranian languages. Unlike the various terms connected with the Aryan arya- in Old Indian, the Old Iranian term has solely an ethnic meaning[20] and there can be no doubt about the ethnic value of Old Iran. arya (Benveniste, 1969, I, pp. 369 f.; Szemerényi; Kellens).[21]
The name Arya lives in the ethnic names like Alan, New Persian: Iran, Ossetian: Ir and Iron.[21][22][23][24][24][25][26][27] The name Iran has been in usage since Sassanid times.[25][26]
The Avesta clearly uses "airya" as an ethnic name (Vd. 1; Yt. 13.143-44, etc.), where it appears in expressions such as airyāfi; daiŋˊhāvō "Iranian lands, peoples," airyō.šayanəm "land inhabited by Iranians," and airyanəm vaējō vaŋhuyāfi; dāityayāfi; "Iranian stretch of the good Dāityā," the river Oxus, the modern Āmū Daryā.[21]
The term "Ariya" appears in the royal Old Persian inscriptions in three different contexts: 1) As the name of the language of the Old Persian version of the inscription of Darius the Great in Behistun; 2) as the ethnic background of Darius in inscriptions at Naqsh-e-Rostam and Susa (Dna, Dse) and Xerxes in the inscription from Persepolis (Xph) and 3) as the definition of the God of Iranian peoples, Ahuramazda, in the Elamite version of the Behistun inscription.[21][22][24] For example in the Dna and Dse Darius and Xerxes describe themselves as "An Achaemenian, A Persian son of a Persian and an Aryan, of Aryan stock".[28] Although Darius the Great called his language the Iranian language,[28] modern scholars refer to it as Old Persian[28] because it is the ancestor of modern Persian language.[29]
The Old Persian and Avestan evidence is confirmed by the Greek sources".[21] Herodotus in his Histories remarks about the Iranian Medes that: "These Medes were called anciently by all people Arians; " (7.62).[21][22][24] In Armenian sources, the Parthians, Medes and Persians are collectively referred to as Iranians.[30] Eudemus of Rhodes apud Damascius (Dubitationes et solutiones in Platonis Parmenidem 125 bis) refers to "the Magi and all those of Iranian (áreion) lineage"; Diodorus Siculus (1.94.2) considers Zoroaster (Zathraustēs) as one of the Arianoi.[21]Strabo, in his "Geography", mentions the unity of Medes, Persians, Bactrians and Sogdians:[23]
The name of Ariana is further extended to a part of Persia and of Media, as also to the Bactrians and Sogdians on the north; for these speak approximately the same language, with but slight variations.
— Geography, 15.8
The trilingual inscription erected by Shapur's command gives a more clear description. The languages used are Parthian, Middle Persian and Greek. In Greek, the inscription says: "ego ... tou Arianon ethnous despotes eimi"("I am lord of the kingdom (Gk. nation) of the Aryans") which translates to "I am the king of the Iranian people". In the Middle Persian, Shapour states: "ērānšahr xwadāy hēm" and in Parthian he states: "aryānšahr xwadāy ahēm".[25][31]
The Bactrian language (a Middle Iranian language) inscription of Kanishka the founder of the Kushan empire at Rabatak, which was discovered in 1993 in an unexcavated site in the Afghanistan province of Baghlan, clearly refers to this Eastern Iranian language as Arya.[32][33] In the post-Islamic era, one can still see a clear usage of the term Iran in the work of the 10th-century historian Hamzeh Isfahani. In his book the history of Prophets and Kings writes: "Aryan which is also called Pars (Persia) is in the middle of these countries and these six countries surround it because the South East is in the hands China, the North of the Turks, the middle South is India, the middle North is Rome, and the South West and the North West is the Sudan and Berber lands".[34] All this evidence shows that the name arya "Iranian" was a collective definition, denoting peoples (Geiger, pp. 167 f.; Schmitt, 1978, p. 31) who were aware of belonging to the one ethnic stock, speaking a common language, and having a religious tradition that centered on the cult of Ahura Mazdā.[35]
History and settlement
The language referred to as Proto-Indo-European (PIE): is ancestral to the Celtic, Italic (including Romance), Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Indo-Iranian, Albanian, Armenian, Greek, and Tocharian languages.
'There is an agreement that the PIE community split into two major groups from wherever its homeland was situated (its location is unknown), and whenever the timing of its dispersal (also unknown). One headed west for Europe and became speakers of Indo-European (all the languages of modern Europe save for Basque, Hungarian, Estonian, and Finnish) while others headed east for Eurasia to become Indo-Iranians. The Indo-Iranians were a community that spoke a common language prior to their branching off into the Iranian and Indo-Aryan languages. Iranian refers to the languages of Iran (Iranian), parts of Pakistan (Balochi and Pashto), Afghanistan (Pashto and Dari), and Tadjikistan (Tajiki) and Indo-Aryan, Sanskrit, Urdu and its many related languages.' – (Carl C. Lamberg-Karlovsky: Case of the Bronze Age)
The division into an "Eastern" and a "Western" group by the early 1st millennium is visible in Avestan vs. Old Persian, the two oldest known Iranian languages. The Old Avestan texts known as the Gathas are believed to have been composed by Zoroaster, the founder of Zoroastrianism, with the Yaz culture (c. 1500 BCE – 1100 BCE) as a candidate for the development of Eastern Iranian culture.
The Iranians had domesticated horses, had traveled far and wide, and from the late 2nd millennium BCE to early 1st millennium BCE they had expanded from the Eurasian Steppe to and settled on the Iranian Plateau.[36][37]
By the early 1st millennium, Ancient Iranian peoples such as Medes, Persians, Bactrians, Parthians and Scythians populated the Iranian plateau, and other Scythian tribes, along with Cimmerians, Sarmatians and Alans populated the steppes north of the Black Sea. The Saka, Scythian, tribes spread as far west as the Balkans and as far east as Xinjiang. Scythians as well formed the Indo-Scythian Empire, and Bactrians formed a Greco-Bactrian Kingdom founded by Diodotus I, the satrap of Bactria. The Kushan Empire, with Bactrian roots/connections, once controlled much of Pakistan, some of Afghanistan and Tajikistan. The Kushan elite (who the Chinese called the Yuezhi) were either a Tocharian-speaking (another Indo-European branch) people or an Eastern Iranian language-speaking people.
With numerous artistic, scientific, architectural and philosophical achievements and numerous kingdoms and empires that bridged much of the civilized world in antiquity, the Iranian peoples were often in close contact with the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Indians, Armenians, Peoples of the Caucasus, Chinese, Turks and Arabs. The various religions of the Iranian people, including Zoroastrianism, Mithraism and Manichaeism, are believed by some scholars to have been significant early philosophical influences on Christianity and Judaism.[38]
Western Iranian peoples
|Part of a series on
|Indo-European topics
Peoples and societies
Religion and mythology
During the 1st centuries of the 1st millennium BCE, the ancient Persians established themselves in the western portion of the Iranian plateau and appear to have interacted considerably with the Elamites and Babylonians, while the Medes also entered in contact with the Assyrians.[39] Remnants of the Median language and Old Persian show their common Proto-Iranian roots, emphasized in Strabo and Herodotus' description of their languages as very similar to the languages spoken by the Bactrians and Soghdians in the east.[19][40] Following the establishment of the Achaemenid Empire, the Persian language (referred to as "Farsi" in Persian) spread from Pars or Fars Province to various regions of the Empire, with the modern dialects of Iran, Afghanistan (also known as Dari) and Central-Asia (known as Tajiki) descending from Old Persian.
Old Persian is attested in the Behistun Inscription (c. 519 BCE), recording a proclamation by Darius the Great.[41] In southwestern Iran, the Achaemenid kings usually wrote their inscriptions in trilingual form (Elamite, Babylonian and Old Persian)[42] while elsewhere other languages were used. The administrative languages were Elamite in the early period, and later Imperial Aramaic.[43]
The early inhabitants of the Achaemenid Empire appear to have adopted the religion of Zoroastrianism.[44] The Baloch who speak a west Iranian language relate an oral tradition regarding their migration from Aleppo, Syria around the year 1000 CE, whereas linguistic evidence links Balochi to Kurmanji, Soranî, Gorani and Zazaki language.[45]
Eastern Iranian peoples
While the Iranian tribes of the south are better known through their texts and modern counterparts, the tribes which remained largely in the vast Eurasian expanse are known through the references made to them by the ancient Greeks, Persians, Indo-Aryans as well as by archaeological finds. Many ancient Sanskrit texts make references to tribes like Sakas, Paradas, Kambojas, Bahlikas, Uttaramadras, Madras, Lohas, Parama Kambojas, Rishikas, Tukharas or Tusharas etc. and locate them in the (Uttarapatha) (north-west) division, in Central Asia, around Hindukush range in northern Pakistan. The Greek chronicler, Herodotus (5th century BCE) makes references to a nomadic people, the Scythians; he describes them as having dwelt in what is today southern Russia.
It is believed that these Scythians were conquered by their eastern cousins, the Sarmatians, who are mentioned by Strabo as the dominant tribe which controlled the southern Russian steppe in the 1st millennium CE. These Sarmatians were also known to the Romans, who conquered the western tribes in the Balkans and sent Sarmatian conscripts, as part of Roman legions, as far west as Roman Britain.
The Sarmatians of the east became the Alans, who also ventured far and wide, with a branch ending up in Western Europe and North Africa, as they accompanied the Germanic Vandals during their migrations. The modern Ossetians are believed to be the sole direct descendants of the Alans, as other remnants of the Alans disappeared following Germanic, Hunnic and ultimately Slavic migrations and invasions.[46] Another group of Alans allied with Goths to defeat the Romans and ultimately settled in what is now called Catalonia (Goth-Alania).[47]
Some of the Saka-Scythian tribes in Central Asia would later move further southeast and invade the Iranian plateau, large sections of present day Afghanistan and finally deep into present day Pakistan (see Indo-Scythians). Another Iranian tribe related to the Saka-Scythians were the Parni in Central Asia, and who later become indistinguishable from the Parthians, speakers of a northwest-Iranian language. Many Iranian tribes, including the Khwarazmians, Massagetae and Sogdians, were assimilated and/or displaced in Central Asia by the migrations of Turkic tribes emanating out of Xinjiang and Siberia.[48]
The most dominant surviving Eastern Iranian peoples are represented by the Pashtuns, whose origins are generally believed to be from the province of Ghor,[citation needed] from which they began to spread until they reached as far west as Herat, north to areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan;[citation needed] and as eastward towards the Indus. The Pashto language shows affinities to the Avestan and Bactrian[citation needed].
The modern Sarikoli in southern Xinjiang and the Ossetians of the Caucasus are remnants of the various Saka tribes. The modern Ossetians claim[citation needed] to be the descendants of the Alano-Sarmatians and their claims are supported by their Northeast Iranian language, while culturally the Ossetians resemble their Caucasian neighbors, the Kabardians and Circassians.[46] Various extinct Iranian peoples existed in the eastern Caucasus, including the Azaris, while some Iranian peoples remain in the region, including the Talysh[49] and the Tats[50] (including the Judeo-Tats,[51] who have relocated to Israel), found in Azerbaijan and as far north as the Russian republic of Dagestan. A remnant of the Sogdians is found in the Yaghnobi-speaking population in parts of the Zeravshan valley in Tajikistan.
Later developments
Starting with the reign of Omar in 634 CE, Muslim Arabs began a conquest of the Iranian plateau. The Arabs conquered the Sassanid Empire of the Persians and seized much of the Byzantine Empire populated by the Kurds and others. Ultimately, the various Iranian peoples, including the Persians, Pashtuns, Kurds and Balochis, converted to Islam. The Iranian peoples would later split along sectarian lines as the Persians (and later the Hazara) adopted the Shi'a sect. As ancient tribes and identities changed, so did the Iranian peoples, many of whom assimilated foreign cultures and peoples.[52]
Later, during the 2nd millennium CE, the Iranian peoples would play a prominent role during the age of Islamic expansion and empire. Saladin, a noted adversary of the Crusaders, was an ethnic Kurd, while various empires centered in Iran (including the Safavids) re-established a modern dialect of Persian as the official language spoken throughout much of what is today Iran and the Caucasus. Iranian influence spread to the neighbouring Ottoman Empire, where Persian was often spoken at court (though a heavy Turko-Persian basis there was set already by the predecessors of the Ottomans in Anatolia, namely the Seljuks and the Sultanate of Rum amongst others) as well to the court of the Mughal Empire. All of the major Iranian peoples reasserted their use of Iranian languages following the decline of Arab rule, but would not begin to form modern national identities until the 19th and early 20th centuries (just as Germans and Italians were beginning to formulate national identities of their own).
There are an estimated 150 to 200 million native speakers of Iranian languages, the five major groups of Persians, Lurs, Kurds, Baloch, and Pashtuns accounting for about 90% of this number.[53] Currently, most of these Iranian peoples live in Iran, Afghanistan, the Caucasus (mainly Ossetia, other parts of Georgia, and Azerbaijan), Iraqi Kurdistan and Kurdish majority populated areas of Turkey, Iran and Syria, Tajikistan, Pakistan, also Uzbekistan. There are also Iranian peoples living in Eastern Arabia such as northern Oman and Bahrain.
Due to recent migrations, there are also large communities of speakers of Iranian languages in Europe, the Americas, and Israel.
The following is a list of peoples that speak Iranian languages with the respective groups's core areas of settlements and their estimated sizes (in millions):
|Persian-speaking peoples
|Iran, the Caucasus, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Pakistan
|Afghanistan, Pakistan
|Turkey, Iran, Iraqi Kurdistan, Syria, Armenia
|Pakistan, Iran, Oman,[2] Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, UAE
|Gilakis & Mazanderanis
|Lurs & Bakhtiaris
|Iran, Kuwait, and Oman[57]
|Pamiri people
|Tajikistan, Afghanistan, China (Xinjiang), Pakistan
|Azerbaijan, Iran
| South Ossetia, Georgia,
Russia (North Ossetia), Hungary
|Uzbekistan and Tajikistan (Zerafshan region)
|Oman (Musandam)
|Zoroastrian groups in India
Like other Indo-Europeans, the early Iranians practiced ritual sacrifice, had a social hierarchy consisting of warriors, clerics and farmers and poetic hymns and sagas to recount their deeds.[58]
Following the Iranian split from the Indo-Iranians, the Iranians developed an increasingly distinct culture. Various common traits can be discerned among the Iranian peoples. For example, the social event Norouz is an Iranian festival that is practiced by nearly all of the Iranian peoples as well as others in the region. Its origins are traced to Zoroastrianism and pre-historic times.
Some Iranian cultures exhibit traits that are unique unto themselves. The Pashtuns adhere to a code of honor and culture known as Pashtunwali, which has a similar counterpart among the Baloch, called Mayar, that is more hierarchical.[59]
The early Iranian peoples worshipped various deities found throughout other cultures where Indo-European immigrants established themselves.[60] The earliest major religion of the Iranian peoples was Zoroastrianism, which spread to nearly all of the Iranian peoples living in the Iranian plateau. Other religions that had their origins in the Iranian world were Mithraism, Manichaeism, and Mazdakism, among others.
Modern speakers of Iranian languages mainly follow Islam. Some follow Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and the Bahá'í Faith, with an unknown number showing no religious affiliation. Overall the numbers of Sunni and Shia among the Iranian peoples are equally distributed. Most Kurds, Tajiks, Pashtuns, and Baloch are Sunni Muslims, while the remainder are mainly Twelver Shi'a, comprising mostly Persians in Iran, and Hazaras in Afghanistan. Zazas in Turkey are largely Alevi, while the Pamiri peoples in Tajikistan and China are nearly all Ismaili. The Christian community is mainly represented by the Armenian Apostolic Church, followed by the Russian Orthodox and Georgian Orthodox Ossetians followed by Nestorians. Judaism is followed mainly by Persian Jews, Kurdish Jews, Bukharian Jews (of Central Asia) and the Mountain Jews (of the Caucasus), most of whom are now found in Israel. The historical religion of the Persian Empire was Zoroastrianism and it still has a few thousand followers, mostly in Yazd and Kerman. They are known as the Parsis in the Indian subcontinent, where many of them fled in historic times following the Arab conquest of Persia, or Zoroastrians in Iran. Another ancient religion is the Yazidi faith, followed by some Kurds in northern Iraq, as well as the majority of the Kurds in Armenia.
Elements of pre-Islamic Zoroastrian and Paganistic beliefs persist among some Islamized groups today, such as the Tajiks, Pashtuns, Pamiri peoples and Ossetians.
Cultural assimilation
In matters relating to culture, the various Turkic-speaking ethnic groups of Iran (notably the Azerbaijani people) and Afghanistan (Uzbeks and Turkmen) are often conversant in Iranian languages, in addition to their own Turkic languages and also have Iranian culture to the extent that the term Turko-Iranian can be applied.[61] The usage applies to various circumstances that involve historic interaction, intermarriage, cultural assimilation, bilingualism and cultural overlap or commonalities.
Notable among this synthesis of Turko-Iranian culture are the Azeris, whose culture, religion and significant periods of history are linked to the Persians.[62] Certain theories and genetic tests[63] suggest that the Azeris are genetically more Iranian than Turkic.
The following either partially descend from Iranian peoples or are sometimes regarded as possible descendants of ancient Iranian peoples:
- Turkic-speakers:
- Azeris: Although Azeris speak a Turkic language (modern Azerbaijani language), they are believed to be primarily descendants of ancient Iranians.[64][65][66] Thus, due to their historical ties with various ancient Iranians, as well as their cultural ties to Persians,[67] the Azeris are often associated with the Iranian peoples (see Origin of Azerbaijani people and the Iranian theory regarding the origin of the Azerbaijanis for more details).[68]
- Turkmens: The Turkmen people are believed to be a mix of Iranian and Turkic ancestry. Genetic studies on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) restriction polymorphism confirmed that Turkmen were characterized by the presence of local Iranian mtDNA lineages, similar to the Eastern Iranian populations, but high male Mongoloid genetic component observed in Turkmens and Hazara in east Iran and Afghanistan with the frequencies of about 20%. This most likely indicates an ancestral combination of Iranian groups and Mongol that the modern Turkmen have inherited and which appears to correspond to the historical record which indicates that various Iranian tribes existed in the region prior to the migration of Turkic tribes who are believed to have merged with the local population and imparted their language and created something of a hybrid Turko-Iranian culture.[69]
- Uzbeks: The modern Uzbek people are believed to have both Iranian and Turkic ancestry. "Uzbek" and "Tajik" are modern designations given to the culturally homogeneous, sedentary population of Central Asia. The local ancestors of both groups – the Turkic-speaking Uzbeks and the Iranian-speaking Tajiks – were known as "Sarts" ("sedentary merchants") prior to the Russian conquest of Central Asia, while "Uzbek" or "Turk" were the names given to the nomadic and semi-nomadic populations of the area. Still today, modern Uzbeks and Tajiks are known as "Sarts" to their Turkic neighbours, the Kazakhs and the Kyrgyz. The ancient Soghdians and Bactrians are among their ancestors. Culturally, the Uzbeks are closer to their sedentary Iranian-speaking neighbours rather than to their nomadic and semi-nomadic Turkic neighbours. Some Uzbek scholars, i.e. Ahmadov and Askarov, favour the Iranian origin theory.[70]
- Slavic-speakers:
- Linguists suggest that the names of the South Slavic peoples, the Serbs and Croats, are of Iranian origin. Those who entertain such a connection propose that the Sarmatian Serboi and alleged Horoathos tribes might have migrated from the Eurasian steppe lands to Eastern and Central Europe, and assimilated with the numerically superior Slavs, passing on their name. Iranian-speaking peoples did inhabit parts of the Balkans in late classical times, and would have been encountered by the Slavs. However, direct linguistic, historical or archaeological proof for such a theory is lacking. (See also: Origin hypotheses of the Serbs and Origin hypotheses of the Croats)
- Indo-Aryan speakers
- Speakers of Indo-Aryan languages share linguistic affinities with speakers of Iranian languages, which suggests a degree of historical interaction between these two groups.
- Swahili-speakers:
- Shirazis: The Shirazi are a sub-group of the Swahili people[71] living on the Swahili Coast of East Africa, especially on the islands of Zanzibar, Pemba and Comoros.[72] Local traditions about their origin claim they are descended from merchant princes from Shiraz in Persia who settled along the Swahili Coast.
Regueiro et al (2006)[73] and Grugni et al (2012)[74] have performed large-scale sampling of different ethnic groups within Iran. They found that the most common Haplogroups were:
- J1-M267; typical of Arabian populations, was rarely over 10% in Iranian groups, but as high as 30% in Assyrian minorities of Iran.
- J2-M172: is the most common Hg in Iran (~23%); almost exclusively represented by J2a-M410 subclade (93%), the other major sub-clade being J2b-M12. Apart from Iranians, J2 is common in Mediterranean and Balkan peoples (Serbs, Greeks, Albanians, Italians, Turks), in the Caucasus (Armenians, Georgia, northeastern Turkey); whilst its frequency drops suddenly beyond Pakistan and northern India.[75] In Europe, J2a is more common in the southern Greece and southern Italy; whilst J2b (J2-M12) is more common in Thessaly, Macedonia and central – northern Italy. Thus J2a and its subgroups within it have a wide distribution from Italy to India, whilst J2b is mostly confined to the Balkans and Italy,[76] being rare even in Turkey. Whilst closely linked with Anatolia and the Levant; and putative agricultural expansions, the distribution of the various sub-clades of J2 likely represents a number of migrational histories which require further elucidation.[75][77]
- R1a-M198: is common in Iran, more so in the east and south rather than the west and north; suggesting a migration toward the south to India then a secondary westward spread across Iran.[78] Whilst the Grongi and Regueiro studies did not define exactly which sub-clades Iranian R1a haplogrouops belong to, private genealogy tests suggest that they virtually all belong to "Eurasian" R1a-Z93.[1] Indeed, population studies of neighbouring Indian groups found that they all were in R1a-Z93.[79] This implies that R1a in Iran did not descend from "European" R1a, or vice versa. Rather, both groups are collateral, sister branches which descend from a parental group hypothesized to have initially lived somewhere between central Asia and Eastern Europe.[80]
- R1b – M269: is widespread from Ireland to Iran, and is common in highland West Asian populations such as Armenians, Turks and Iranians – with an average frequency of 8.5%. Iranian R1b belongs to the L-23 subclade,[81] which is an older than the derivative subclade (R1b-M412) which is most common in western Europe.[82]
- Haplogroup G and subclades: most concentrated in the southern Caucasus,[83] it is present in 10% of Iranians.[84]
- Haplogroup E and various subclades are markers of various northern and eastern African populations. They are present in less than 10% of Iranians (see Afro-Iranians).
Two large – scale papers by Haber (2012)[85] and Di Cristofaro (2013)[86] analyzed populations from Afghanistan, where several Iranian-speaking groups are native. They found that different groups (e.g. Baluch, Hazara, Pashtun) were quite diverse, yet overall:
- R1a (subclade not further analyzed) was the predominant haplogroup, especially amongst Pashtuns and Tajiks.
- The presence of "east Eurasian" haplogroup C3, especially in Hazaras (33-40%), in part linked to Mongol expansions into the region..
- The presence of haplogroup J2, like in Iran, of 5–20%.
- A relative paucity of "Indian" haplgroup H (< 10%).
Internal diversity and distant affinities
Overall, Iranian-speaking populations are characterized by high internal diversity. For Afghanistan, "It is possibly due to the strategic location of this region and its unique harsh geography of mountains, deserts and steppes, which could have facilitated the establishment of social organizations within expanding populations, and helped maintaining genetic boundaries among groups that have developed over time into distinct ethnicities" as well as the "high level of endogamy practiced by these groups".[87] The data ultimately suggests that Afghanistan, like other northern-central Asian regions, has continually been the recipient rather than a source of gene flow. Although, populations from Iran proper are also diverse, J2a-M530 likely spread out of Iran, and constitutes a common genetic substratum for all Iranian populations, which was then modified by further differential gene flows.[84] In Iran, language was a greater determinant of genetic similarity between different groups,[88] whereas in Afghanistan and other areas of northern central Asia, this was not the case.[89]
Overall in Iran, native population groups do not form tight clusters either according to language or region. Rather, they occupy intermediate positions among Near Eastern and Caucasus clusters.[90][91] Some of the Iranian groups lie within the Near Eastern group (often with such as the Turks and Georgians), but none fell into the Arab or Asian groups. Some Iranian groups in Iran, such as the Gilaki's and Mazandarani's, are genetically virtually identical to South Caucasus ethnic groups,[92] while the small Iranian Baloch ethnic group, being the only outliers who have heavy pulls towards South Asia.
In Afghanistan, Iranian population groups such as the Pashtuns and Tajiks occupy intermediate positions amongst northwestern South Asian ethnic groups, such as along the Baloch, Brahui, Kashmiri's and Sindhi's, with a small minor pull towards West Asia.[93][94]
Iranians are only distantly related to Europeans as a whole, predominantly with southern Europeans and southern Balkan peoples like Greeks, Albanians, Serbs, Italians, and Sardinians rather than northern Europeans like Swedes, Danes, English, or the Scottish.[95][2] Nevertheless, Iranian-speaking Central Asians do show closer affinity to Europeans than do Turkic-speaking Central Asians.[96]
- Бактрийка.JPG
Bactrian ladieswear Kafirnigan (Tajikistan)
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- Ancient Persian costumes.jpg
Ancient Persian costumes
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Women's clothing in Safavid Persia
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Sogdian ladieswear
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Sogdian menswear
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Scythian emissaries meeting with Darius
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Ancient Mede nobility
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Scilurus, King of Scythia begging his sons to reconcile
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Scythians at the Tomb of Ovid
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Persian man by Ker Porter
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Persian girl by Ker Porter
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Parthian prisoner on chains, c. 200 CE
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Men's clothing in Safavid times, 1600s
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Warrior of Scythians, second part of 7th and 6th century BCE
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Sarmatians, Dacians, Scythians
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Sogdian warrior
- Sogdian prisoners are joyful at being condemned by so great a king as Alexander, who consequently pardons them -Curtius 7.10.4-9- (1696).jpg
Sogdian prisoners are joyful at being condemned by so great a king as Alexander, who consequently pardons them
- Daf-isfahan.jpg
A Persian woman playing the Daf, from a painting on the walls of Chehel-sotoon palace, Isfahan, 17th century
- Hasht-Behesht Palace kamancheh.jpg
Painting from Hasht-Behesht palace, Isfahan, Iran, from 1669
- Fuman anahita.jpg
Anahita statue in city of Fuman, lran
See also
- ^
- Iran: Library of Congress, Library of Congress – Federal Research Division. "Ethnic Groups and Languages of Iran" (PDF). Retrieved 2009-12-02. (Persian and Caspian dialects-65% Kurdish 8%-Luri/Bakhtiari 5%- Baluchi 4%):80% of the population or approximately 63 million people.
- Afghanistan: CIA Factbook Afghanistan: unting Pashtuns, Tajiks, Baluchs, 21 million
- Tajiks of Central Asia counting Tajikistan and Uzbekistan 10–15 million
- Kurds Syria, Lebanon and Iraq based on CIA factbook estimate 18 million
- Zazas of Turkey, based on CIA factbook estimate 4 million
- Ossetians, Talysh, Tats, Kurds of the Caucasus and Central Asia: 1–2 million based on CIA factbook/ethnologue.
- Tajiks of China: 50,000 to 100,000
- Iranian speakers in Bahrain, the Persian Gulf , Western Europe and USA, 3 million.
- Pakistan counting Baluchis+Pashtus+Afghan refugees based on CIA factbook and other sources: 71 million.
- ^ a b J.E. Peterson. "Oman's Diverse Society" (PDF). p. 4.
- ^ "The Report: Kuwait 2008". Oxford Business Group. 2008. p. 25.
- ^ The Ossetians of the Caucasus are Orthodox Christians
- ^ R.N Frye, "IRAN v. PEOPLE OF IRAN" in Encycloapedia Iranica. "In the following discussion of "Iranian peoples," the term "Iranian" may be understood in two ways. It is, first of all, a linguistic classification, intended to designate any society which inherited or adopted, and transmitted, an Iranian language. The set of Iranian-speaking peoples is thus considered a kind of unity, in spite of their distinct lineage identities plus all the factors which may have further differentiated any one group's sense of self."
- ^ The Kurds: A Concise Handbook by Mehrdad R. Izady
- ^ Historical Dictionary of the Kurds by Michael M. Gunter
- ^ The Encyclopedia Americana: The International Reference Work, Volume 15
- ^ Waldman & Mason 2006, p. 692
- ^ "IRAN vi. IRANIAN LANGUAGES AND SCRIPTS". Encyclopædia Iranica. Bibliotheca Persica Press. 15 December 2006. Retrieved 1 June 2015.
- ^ a b Beckwith 2009, p. 58-77
- ^ Mallory 1997, p. 308-311
- ^ Harmatta 1992, p. 348: "From the first millennium b.c., we have abundant historical, archaeological and linguistic sources for the location of the territory inhabited by the Iranian peoples. In this period the territory of the northern Iranians, they being equestrian nomads, extended over the whole zone of the steppes and the wooded steppes and even the semi-deserts from the Great Hungarian Plain to the Ordos in northern China."
- ^ Emmerick, Ronald Eric. "Iranian languages". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Retrieved 29 May 2015.
- ^ Frye, Richard Nelson, Greater Iran, ISBN 1-56859-177-2 p.xi: "... Iran means all lands and people where Iranian languages were and are spoken, and where in the past, multi-faceted Iranian cultures existed. ..."
- ^ Oxford English Dictionnary: "Aryan from Sanskrit Arya 'Noble'"
- ^ Gershevitch, I. (1968). "Old Iranian Literature". Iranistik. Hanbuch Der Orientalistik – Abeteilung – Der Nahe Und Der Mittlere Osten 1. Brill Publishers. p. 203. ISBN 90-04-00857-8.: page 1
- ^ "Farsi-Persian language" — Farsi.net . Retrieved 4 June 2006.
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- ^ a b c d e f g G. Gnoli, "Iranian Identity ii. Pre-Islamic Period" in Encyclopedia Iranica. Online accessed in 2010 at "?".
- ^ a b c R. Schmitt, "Aryans" in Encyclopedia Iranica:Excerpt:"The name "Aryan" (OInd. āˊrya-, Ir. *arya- [with short a-], in Old Pers. ariya-, Av. airiia-, etc.) is the self designation of the peoples of Ancient Iran (as well as India) who spoke Aryan languages, in contrast to the "non-Aryan" peoples of those "Aryan" countries (cf. OInd. an-āˊrya-, Av. an-airiia-, etc.), and lives on in ethnic names like Alan (Lat. Alani, NPers. Īrān, Oss. Ir and Iron.". Also accessed online: "?". in May, 2010
- ^ a b The "Aryan" Language, Gherardo Gnoli, Instituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente, Roma, 2002.
- ^ a b c d H. W. Bailey, "Arya" in Encyclopedia Iranica. Excerpt: "ARYA an ethnic epithet in the Achaemenid inscriptions and in the Zoroastrian Avestan tradition. "Arya an ethnic epithet in the Achaemenid inscriptions and in the Zoroastrian Avestan tradition".[dead link] Also accessed online in May, 2010.
- ^ a b c D. N. Mackenzie, "Ērān, Ērānšahr" in Encyclopedia Iranica. "?". Retrieved 2010.
- ^ a b Dalby, Andrew (2004), Dictionary of Languages, Bloomsbury, ISBN 0-7475-7683-1
- ^ G. Gnoli. "ēr, ēr mazdēsn". Encyclopedia Iranica.
- ^ a b c R. G. Kent. Old Persian. Grammar, texts, lexicon. 2nd ed., New Haven, Conn.
- ^ Professor Gilbert Lazard: The language known as New Persian, which usually is called at this period (early Islamic times) by the name of Dari or Parsi-Dari, can be classified linguistically as a continuation of Middle Persian, the official religious and literary language of Sassanian Iran, itself a continuation of Old Persian, the language of the Achaemenids. Unlike the other languages and dialects, ancient and modern, of the Iranian group such as Avestan, Parthian, Soghdian, Kurdish, Balochi, Pashto, etc., Old Middle and New Persian represent one and the same language at three states of its history. It had its origin in Fars (the true Persian country from the historical point of view) and is differentiated by dialectical features, still easily recognizable from the dialect prevailing in north-western and eastern Iran in Lazard, Gilbert 1975, "The Rise of the New Persian Language" in Frye, R. N., The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 4, pp. 595–632, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- ^ R.W. Thomson. History of Armenians by Moses Khorenat'si. Harvard University Press, 1978. Pg 118, pg 166
- ^ MacKenzie D.N. Corpus inscriptionum Iranicarum Part. 2., inscription of the Seleucid and Parthian periods of Eastern Iran and Central Asia. Vol. 2. Parthian, London, P. Lund, Humphries 1976–2001
- ^ N. Sims-Williams, "Further notes on the Bactrian inscription of Rabatak, with the Appendix on the name of Kujula Kadphises and VimTatku in Chinese". Proceedings of the Third European Conference of Iranian Studies (Cambridge, September 1995). Part 1: Old and Middle Iranian<Studies, N. Sims-Williams, ed. Wiesbaden, pp 79-92
- ^ The "Aryan" Language, Gherardo Gnoli, Instituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente, Roma, 2002
- ^ Hamza Isfahani, Tarikh Payaambaraan o Shaahaan, translated by Jaf'ar Shu'ar,Tehran: Intishaaraat Amir Kabir, 1988.
- ^ G. Gnoli. "Iranian Identity ii. Pre-Islamic Period". Encyclopedia Iranica. Retrieved 2010.
- ^ "Amazons in the Scythia: new finds at the Middle Don, Southern Russia". Taylorandfrancis.metapress.com. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
- ^ "Secrets of the Dead, Casefile: Amazon Warrior Women". Pbs.org. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
- ^ Runciman, Steven (1982). The Medieval Manichee: A Study of the Christian Dualist Heresy. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-28926-2.
- ^ Liverani, M. (1995). "The Medes at Esarhaddon's Court". Journal of Cuneiform Studies 47: 57–62. doi:10.2307/1359815.
- ^ "The Geography of Strabo" — University of Chicago. . Retrieved 4 June 2006.
- ^ "Avestan xᵛarǝnah-, etymology and concept by Alexander Lubotsky" — Sprache und Kultur. Akten der X. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, 22.-28. September 1996, ed. W. Meid, Innsbruck (IBS) 1998, 479–488. . Retrieved 4 June 2006.
- ^ R. G. Kent, Old Persian: Grammar, texts and lexicon.
- ^ R. Hallock (1969), Persepolis Fortification Tablets; A. L. Driver (1954), Aramaic Documents of the V Century BC.
- ^ "Kurdish: An Indo-European Language By Siamak Rezaei Durroei"[dead link] — University of Edinburgh, School of Informatics. . Retrieved 4 June 2006. Archived 17 June 2006 at the Wayback Machine[dead link]
- ^ "The Iranian Language Family, Khodadad Rezakhani" — Iranologie. . Retrieved 4 June 2006.
- ^ a b A History of Russia by Nicholas Riasanovsky, pp. 11–18, Russia before the Russians, ISBN 0-19-515394-4 . Retrieved 4 June 2006.
- ^ The Sarmatians: 600 BC-AD 450 (Men-at-Arms) by Richard Brzezinski and Gerry Embleton, 19 Aug 2002
- ^ "Jeannine Davis-Kimball, Archaeologist" — Thirteen WNET New York. . Retrieved 4 June 2006.
- ^ "Report for Talysh" — Ethnologue. Retrieved 4 June 2006.
- ^ "Report for Tats" — Ethnologue. . Retrieved 4 June 2006.
- ^ "Report for Judeo-Tats" — Ethnologue. . Retrieved 4 June 2006.
- ^ The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates by Hugh Kennedy, ISBN 0-582-40525-4 (retrieved 4 June 2006), p. 135
- ^ Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.) (2005). "Report for Iranian languages". Ethnologue: Languages of the World (Fifteenth ed.) (Dallas: SIL International).
- ^ a b Hamzeh'ee, M. Reza. The Yaresan: a sociological, historical and religio-historical study of a Kurdish community, 1990.
- ^ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1529-8817.2005.00174.x/full
- ^ http://www.amazon.com/Zaza-Kurds-Turkey-Minority-Globalised/dp/1845118758/
- ^ Ethnologue report for Kumzari
- ^ In Search of the Indo-Europeans, by J.P. Mallory, p. 112–127, ISBN 0-500-27616-1 . Retrieved 10 June 2006.
- ^ "Pakistan — Baloch" — Library of Congress Country Studies . Retrieved 4 June 2006.
- ^ "History of Iran-Chapter 2 Indo-Europeans and Indo-Iranians" — Iranologie . Retrieved 4 June 2006.
- ^ Turko-Persia in Historical Perspective, edited by Robert Canfield, ISBN 0-521-52291-9 . Retrieved 4 June 2006.
- ^ "Azerbaijan-Iran Relations: Challenges and Prospects" — Harvard University, Belfer Center, Caspian Studies Program . Retrieved 4 June 2006.
- ^ "Cambridge Genetic Study of Iran" — ISNA (Iranian Students News Agency), 06-12-2006, news-code: 8503-06068 . Retrieved 9 June 2006.
- ^ Minorsky, V.; Minorsky, V. "(Azarbaijan). Encyclopaedia of Islam. Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs. Brill
- ^ R. N. Frye. "People of Iran". Encyclopedia Iranica.
- ^ X.D. Planhol. "Lands of Iran". Encyclopedia Iranica.
- ^ The Columbia Encyclopedia: Azerbaijan[dead link]
- ^ "Who are the Azeris? by Aylinah Jurabchi". The Iranian. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
- ^ http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/maik/ruge/2002/00000038/00000004/00375256;jsessionid=1i2j4imsmaj3n.alice
- ^ Askarov, A. & B.Ahmadov, O'zbek Xalqning Kilib Chiqishi Torixi. O'zbekiston Ovozi, 20 January 1994.
- ^ Kilwa chronicle
- ^ Tanzania Ethnic Groups, East Africa Living Encyclopedia, accessed 28 June 2010
- ^ Regueiro et al. (2006). "Iran: Tricontinental Nexus for Y-Chromosome Driven Migration". Hum Hered 61: 132–143. doi:10.1159/000093774.
- ^ Grugni (2012). "Ancient Migratory Events in the Middle East: New Clues from the Y-Chromosome Variation of Modern Iranians". PLOS One 7: e41252. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0041252.
- ^ a b Sengupta et al. Polarity and Temporality of High-Resolution Y-Chromosome Distributions in India Identify Both Indigenous and Exogenous Expansions and Reveal Minor Genetic Influence of Central Asian Pastoralists. AJHG 78; 2. 2006
- ^ Cinnioglu et al. Excavating Y-chromosome haplotype strata in Anatolia" Hum Genet 2004 Jan;114(2):127-48. Epub 2003 Oct 29.
- ^ Semino; Origin, Diffusion; Differentiation; Y-Chromosome Haplogroups, E; Later; Area, Mediterranean et al. (May 2004). Am J Hum Genet 74 (5): 1023–1034. Missing or empty
- ^ Regueiro, 2006
- ^ New Y-chromosome binary markers improve phylogenetic resolution within haplogroup R1a1. Horolma Pamjav et al. AJPA DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.22167. 2012
- ^ Pamjav; 2012. "Inner and Central Asia is an overlap zone for the R1a1-Z280 and R1a1-Z93 lineages. This pattern implies that an early differentiation zone of R1a1-M198 conceivably occurred somewhere within the Eurasian Steppes or the Middle East and Caucasus region as they lie between South Asia and Eastern Europe"
- ^ Grugni, 2013.
- ^ Myres et al. (2011). "A major Y-chromosome haplogroup R1b Holocene era founder effect in Central and Western Europe". European Journal of Human Genetics 19: 95–101. doi:10.1038/ejhg.2010.146.
- ^ Rootsi et al. (2012). "Distinguishing the co-ancestries of haplogroup G Y-chromosomes in the populations of Europe and the Caucasus". European Journal of Human Genetics 20: 1275–1282. doi:10.1038/ejhg.2012.86.
- ^ a b Grugni, 2012
- ^ Afghanistan's Ethnic Groups Share a Y-Chromosomal Heritage Structured by Historical Events. PLOS One mach 2012. 10.1371/journal.pone.0034288
- ^ Afghan Hindu Kush: Where Eurasian Sub-Continent Gene Flows Converge. PLOS One, Oct 2013. 10.1371/journal.pone.0076748
- ^ Haber, 2012
- ^ Grugni 2012
- ^ Haber 2012
- ^ "West Asian clusters compared with Europe and Asia". Retrieved 19 April 2014.
- ^ "West Asian and European clusters, PCA plot". Retrieved 19 April 2014.
- ^ "Concomitant Replacement of Language and mtDNA in South Caspian Populations of Iran". Retrieved 19 April 2014.
- ^ "PCA plot West Asian_European_South Asian populations". Retrieved 19 April 2014.
- ^ "Major admixture in India took place ~4.2-1.9 thousand years ago (Moorjani et al. 2013)". Retrieved 19 April 2014.
- ^ Grugni (2012)p="Iranian groups do not cluster all together, occupying intermediate positions among Arab, Near Eastern and Asian clusters"
- ^ Dr Cristofaro, 2013
Literature and further reading
- Banuazizi, Ali and Weiner, Myron (eds.). The State, Religion, and Ethnic Politics: Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan (Contemporary Issues in the Middle East), Syracuse University Press (August, 1988). ISBN 0-8156-2448-4.
- Beckwith, Christopher I. (16 March 2009). Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691135894. Retrieved 29 May 2015.
- Canfield, Robert (ed.). Turko-Persia in Historical Perspective, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2002). ISBN 0-521-52291-9
- Curzon, R. The Iranian People of the Caucasus. ISBN 0-7007-0649-6.
- Derakhshani, Jahanshah. Die Arier in den nahöstlichen Quellen des 3. und 2. Jahrtausends v. Chr., 2nd edition (1999). ISBN 964-90368-6-5.
- Frye, Richard, Greater Iran, Mazda Publishers (2005). ISBN 1-56859-177-2.
- Frye, Richard. Persia, Schocken Books, Zurich (1963). ASIN B0006BYXHY.
- Harmatta, János (1992). "The Emergence of the Indo-Iranians: The Indo-Iranian Languages". In Dani, A. H.; Masson, V. M. History of Civilizations of Central Asia: The Dawn of Civilization: Earliest Times to 700 B. C. (PDF). UNESCO. p. 346-370. ISBN 978-92-3-102719-2. Retrieved 29 May 2015.
- Kennedy, Hugh. The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates, Longman, New York, NY (2004). ISBN 0-582-40525-4
- Khoury, Philip S. & Kostiner, Joseph. Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East, University of California Press (1991). ISBN 0-520-07080-1.
- Littleton, C. & Malcor, L. From Scythia to Camelot, Garland Publishing, New York, NY, (2000). ISBN 0-8153-3566-0.
- Mallory, J.P. In Search of the Indo-Europeans, Thames and Hudson, London (1991). ISBN 0-500-27616-1.
- Mallory, J. P. (1997). Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 1884964982. Retrieved February 15, 2015.
- McDowall, David. A Modern History of the Kurds, I.B. Tauris, 3rd Rev edition (2004). ISBN 1-85043-416-6.
- Nassim, J. Afghanistan: A Nation of Minorities, Minority Rights Group, London (1992). ISBN 0-946690-76-6.
- Riasanovsky, Nicholas. A History of Russia, Oxford University Press, Oxford (2004). ISBN 0-19-515394-4.
- Sims-Williams, Nicholas. Indo-Iranian Languages and People, British Academy (2003). ISBN 0-19-726285-6.
- Iran Nama, (Iran Travelogue in Urdu) by Hakim Syed Zillur Rahman, Tibbi Academy, Aligarh, India (1998).
- Saga of the Aryans, Historical novel on ancient Iranian migrations by Porus Homi Havewala, Published Mumbai, India (2005, 2010).
- Chopra, R. M.,"Indo-Iranian Cultural Relations Through The Ages", Iran Society, Kolkata, 2005.
- Waldman, Carl; Mason, Catherine (2006). Encyclopedia of European Peoples. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 1438129181. Retrieved January 16, 2015.
External links
|Wikisource has the text of The New Student's Reference Work article Iranians.
- Encyclopædia Britannica: Iranian languages
- Maps and demographic information on all the people groups of Iran found at www.EveryTongue.com/iran


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(Note: this was originally written as a comment for a post on the excellent Action Flick Chick blog by Katrina Hill, but was eaten by the WordPress.org instance there, so I decided to publish it here, after a lot of editing and enhancements.)
Excellent feature! I greatly enjoyed it (just note that I'm a guy) - thanks for sharing and I hope the panel was nice. I hope to see and welcome many talented and resourceful female writers and authors of sci-fi and action, who will collaborate to create part of the next generation of female heroines who are intelligent, resourceful, competent, and talented, yet still sexy, and feminine. Naturally, as a male writer (see the stories and screenplays section of my homepage), I am not going to stand idle and let my peers, whether male or female, surpass me easily, but I suppose that there's always a place for more people competing for that.
Buffy Summers was an awesome character, and I was totally into her and Sarah Michelle Gellar, who was the superb actress and martial artist, who played her, back in the wild wild Web 1.0 days and the first seasons of Buffy (before Buffy graduated from high school and when Faith was still around). That was shortly after I graduated from high school, had lots of raging hormones, and worked in several workplaces as a programmer, and was about to start my college degree. I think Buffy was the "perfection achieved" (or epitome or whatever it is called) version of the fighting lady, whom girls could relate to, look up to as a role model, and found it easy to feel empathy for, and that not only were guys not intimidated by her, but found her extremely attractive.
Anyway, Buffy and other shows I watched in this period such as Friends and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, provided a lot of inspiration and fodder for my stories and screenplays, and I have also created a world titled the Selinaverse that crosses many such influences (what can I say - bipolar disorder / manic-depresssive disorder can be fun sometimes… ;-)) along with other things. Even my most normal story yet - The Human Hacking Field Guide, which tells the story of several high school teenagers in 2005 Los Angeles, who deal extensively in working on open source software (and to a lesser extent free/open "content"), drew inspiration from the characters of Buffy and Faith for the protagonist (Jennifer Raymond) and the antagonist (Eve "Erisa" Siegel) respectively.
I think part of the problem with the realisation of female heroines and even female authors, was the traditional Judeo-Christian Ethics value system which limited the amount of activities women were able to do to exclude philosophy, most important artworks, writing, poetry and being a scholar, the performing arts, and naturally - fighting. Furthermore, the names of most of the most important action heroines in the Bible were deemed inauspicious in the Jewish tradition (the Halakhah), only to become popular among Jews after the Zionist revolution. An action hero or a "hacker" (see the essay titled The Word "Hacker" by Paul Graham) is someone who bends the rules, makes up his or her own rules, takes decisive actions, and controls his or her own destiny, even if they are completely not violent. See what I have written about the David who fought Goliath. This is while a tragic hero accepts his own fate, is bound by many invisible rules, and does not take decisive action - the exact opposite of an action hero. (That put aside, I feel that in art, action heroes and heroines often also initially have hubris (= excessive human pride) and undergo a sort of Catharsis (= a humbling process), although it is a more subtle than the one experienced by tragic heroes in tragedies.)
In any case, I think there's some bitter justice in the fact that there have been several important Jewesses who championed the break from the Judeo-Christian ethical system:
Sarah Michelle Gellar.
Alisa Rosenbaum → Ayn Rand, who despite her many faults in personality and in her philosophical work, and the fact that she often fell victim to the falsehoods and moral fashions of her time, greatly helped lay the ground for the move away from the traditional Judeo-Christian ethics (and not just the sexual/romantic ones).
I was told that Ayn Rand's philosophy was criticised for being not very "original", but this kind of "originality" in copyright, having original ideas, patents, and even trade secrets (and what open source/open content/etc. like to call being "proprietary"), was a 20th century fad, and Rand still deserves credit for having a retro, but right-in-the-spotlight philosophy. I am well aware that Rand kinda professed to have supported this "originality/anti-open" philosophy in her works, but in her deeds, she was almost always "if you do not publish - you perish", in the sense of making her opinions and thoughts known and given to the public consumption, even if she was criticised for them.
Marta Kauffman, who co-created the Television show Friends, which despite superficial appearances to the contrary, took a large part in championing an Aristotelian society, a positive sense-of-life, resourcefulness, passion for life, gender equality, and critical thought - including of many modernist and post-modern scientific beliefs.
P.S: you should watch the three episodes of the Parody: A Love Story (Twilight, Harry Potter, Karate Kid, and Buffy parody) video on YouTube, which sports a chubby girl, who seems unattractive at first, but ends up learning and doing some mean Karate in a typical Buffy-like hotness.
Anyway, thanks for the excellent write up and sorry for getting carried away.
Best regards,
— Mr. Shlomi Fish (a.k.a "Rindolf") of Tel Aviv, Israel.


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At Adult Community Learning Essex, prospective learners are being encouraged to register for courses and fulfil their goals.
It is running a #nostoppingme campaign, highlighting the potential opportunities its courses can create for people in 2016.
Professional qualifications, apprenticeships and leisure courses are all available, with subjects including accounting, jewellery making, law, pottery, photography and languages.
Free English and maths functional skills courses are available. 'Fast track' GCSEs are also taking place and could be free if you have not achieved a grade A*-C previously.
Councilor Ray Gooding, Essex county councillor responsible for education and lifelong learning, said: "Adult Community Learning offers a wide range of courses with the potential to open new doors for people, and the start of a new year is the ideal time to get started.
"Whether you are looking to improve your job prospects, start your journey towards a new career or pursue personal interests, I would encourage you to have a look at what's on offer.
"With fantastic discounts now available, there really should be no stopping you."
Adult Community Learning has centres in Colchester, Harwich, Clacton, Basildon, Rayleigh, Chelmsford, Witham and Maldon.
For a full list of the courses available, visit essex.gov.uk/adult-learning or call 0345 603 7635.
College courses help fulfil your potential
At Adult Community Learning Essex, prospective learners are being encouraged to register for courses and fulfil their goals.
Comments are closed on this article.


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|"be consistent"
Re(3): To install a module...by Dog and Pony (Priest)
|on Oct 01, 2002 at 06:23 UTC ( #201930=note: print w/replies, xml )
|Need Help??
Ah, sorry. Of course. There is a command 'describe' in PPM.
Lets say you make a search for Foo:
Which returns the result
When you then try 'install 1' to get Foo installed, you get the error message "No suitable implementation found" or some such. Then do 'describe 1', followed by another 'install 1'. Describe does list what platforms are available, and if 'MSWin32-x86-multi-thread' is not in the list, you are out of luck. Many times though, it seems PPM doesn't really check for this, but the describe forces it to do so, making the installation succeed.
And yes, you can do 'describe Foo' directly instead.
Hope that helps.
You have moved into a dark place.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
In Section Past Polls


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"Splash" (formerly "Celebrity Diving") Premieres Tuesday, March 19 on ABC
As announced on "Good Morning America" this morning, the final two celebrity contestants joining the cast of "Splash" (formerly titled "Celebrity Diving") are the NBA's all-time leading scorer and New York Times best-selling author Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and extreme skier Rory Bushfield. The two celebrities will be diving into the pool with previously announced cast members Louie Anderson, Drake Bell, Chuy Bravo, Nicole Eggert, Keshia Knight Pulliam, Ndamukong Suh, Katherine Webb and Kendra Wilkinson.
"Splash" marks the first time 10 celebrities will train and compete in regulation platform and springboard diving at dizzying heights in front of a weekly poolside audience. Each week the celebrities will look fear in the face as they leap off the 10-meter high dive, pair off to complete synchronized stunts, and flip, twist and spin into the depths of the pool below. Leading up to the competition, the world's most decorated and medaled diving legend, Greg Louganis, will give each celebrity weeks of training. Each dive will be critiqued by the judges, London Olympic U.S. Gold medalist David Boudia and Australian Olympic athlete and USA Dive Team director Steve Foley. "Splash" premieres TUESDAY, MARCH 19 (8:00-9:00 p.m., ET) on The ABC Television Network.
As announced this morning, the final two contestants joining the "Splash" cast are:
KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is one of basketball's greatest players. The 7-foot-2 Hall of Fame center, famous for his indefensible skyhook, dominated the NBA for 20 years and is the NBA's All-Time Leading Scorer with 38,387 points. Prior to his stellar professional career, Kareem led the UCLA Bruins to three consecutive NCAA championships and was named the only player in the 75-year history of the NCAA to be named the Most Valuable Player of the Tournament three years in row. Today Kareem's leadership skills have taken on a new direction. In addition to being a New York Times best-selling author and award-winning filmmaker, he also believes education issues should be a critical focus in the US and around the globe. In 2012 Kareem was named a U.S. Cultural Ambassador by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and he has been named California's STEM Education (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) Afterschool Ambassador. He has also been honored by the NBA with his own 16' tall bronze statue at Staples Center, Los Angeles, memorializing his contributions to the city and his team with his signature skyhook. Having been diagnosed with Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myeloid leukemia (Ph+ CML) in 2008, Kareem has also become a passionate cancer advocate, speaking across the country to others about his cancer journey. He is currently writing three new children's books for Disney's Hyperion, based on a basketball street gang, which will publish later this year. A regular contributing columnist for ESPN.com and the Huffington Post, Kareem is the recipient of two prestigious 2013 NAACP Image Awards, one for best documentary for his film, "On the Shoulders of Giants - The Story of the Greatest Team You've Never Heard Of," and the other for best children's book for "What Color is My World." For information go to www.kareemabduljabbar.com.
RORY BUSHFIELD -- Rory "Bushy" Bushfield, the 29-year-old extreme skiing air-hound from just outside Calgary, Alberta, has a very simple philosophy -- get low, go big, and stomp. Refreshingly modest and personable, Rory lets his actions speak louder than his words, a trait he showcases in the impressive extreme skiing film segments he produces each season. He now resides in Squamish, BC, where he shreds the backcountry on a daily basis, continually progressing his style and pushing the skiers around him. In addition to filming award winning ski segments with top film companies such as Teton Gravity Research, Matchstick Productions and Sherpas Cinema, Rory also recently joined the cast of Travis Pastranas' Nitro Circus Live Tour, where he performs in front of sold out audiences across the world. A true outdoorsman, when he's not skiing or filming, Rory spends his days mountain biking, surfing, base jumping, building things, fixing things and flying his plane. In 2011 he married his longtime girlfriend, fellow pro skier Sarah Burke. He proposed by spelling out "Marry Me Sarah" in rocks in a remote snow covered field outside of Whistler and flew Sarah over the field so that she could see it. Sarah was the best female freeskier of all time, a 4x Winter X Games Gold Medalist, and one of the main forces for Ski Halfpipe's inclusion in the 2014 Winter Olympics. She tragically passed away in January 2012 due to a fall in the halfpipe during training.
"Splash" is from Eyeworks USA and is based on the breakout hit and Dutch format, "Celebrity Splash." The series is executive-produced by JD Roth, Todd A. Nelson, Brant Pinvidic and Josh Greenberg.
About Eyeworks USA
Eyeworks USA (formerly 3 Ball Productions), run by CEOs and executive producers JD Roth and Todd A. Nelson, is one television's most prolific producers of reality and non-fiction programming, both for broadcast and cable, producing shows grounded in the ability of people to make real change and transform their lives. In addition to "Splash," Eyeworks USA produces for ABC the franchise "Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition," which will air its third season in 2013. Roth and Nelson are also known for their award-winning franchise "The Biggest Loser," now in Season 14 on NBC. Other hit series include" Flying Wild Alaska," in Season 3 for Discovery; "Bar Rescue," in Season 3 for Spike; "My Cat from Hell," in Season 4 for Animal Planet; and "LA Hair," in Season 2 for WE TV, with Eyeworks' new series, "Fat Girl Revenge," launching on Oxygen in 2013. Other long-running, genre-creating Eyeworks USA franchises include the worldwide hit "Beauty and the Geek" (which ran for six seasons in the U.S.); the ground-breaking "For Love or Money" (which ran for four seasons on NBC); as well as "Breaking Bonaduce," "The Pick-Up Artist" and "Scott Baio is 45 and Single" (VH1), "Hammer Time" (A&E), "Fourth and Long" (Spike), "Groomer Has It" (Animal Planet) and the series that started the company, "Endurance," which ran for seven seasons on Discovery.
"Splash" is broadcast in 720 Progressive (720P), ABC's selected HDTV format, with 5.1-channel surround sound.
For more information on "Splash," visit ABC.com/Splash


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Presumptive Kiowa County Attorney and current Ford County Assistant Attorney J. Scott James will serve 48-hours in jail for his March 31 DUI arrest.
Presumptive Kiowa County Attorney and current Ford County Assistant Attorney J. Scott James will serve 48-hours in jail for his March 31 DUI arrest.
James appeared in Edwards County District Court on Aug. 31 to face driving under the influence charges stemming from his March 31 arrest by the Kansas State Highway Patrol.
James pled guilty to the charges and received a suspended one-year jail sentence. He is required to serve 48 consecutive hours in the county jail and will serve three days of house arrest. He must complete his sentence within 30 days.
In addition the judge ordered James' license to operate a motor vehicle suspended for one year, after which he will be required to use an "interlock" device for an additional year.
An interlock device requires the driver to submit a breath sample to operate the vehicle. It measures the drivers alcohol content and allows ignition if it is below a predetermined level.
Edwards County Attorney Mark Frame, acting as the prosecuting attorney, told the Dodge City Daily Globe that James had completed a court ordered alcohol treatment program and will have to complete one year of supervised probation.
James will also pay $160 in court costs and a $1,250 fine.
"I made a mistake," James wrote in a July 16 email. "I take full responsibility for it. I'm not proud of it, but I had to learn an important lesson. I've done everything I can to address this and to make sure it is not a mistake I will repeat."
James was pulled over on March 31 in Dodge City by a Ford County Sheriff for a lane violation. A subsequent blood sample, taken after he refused to submit to a breathalyzer, showed he was over the .08 blood alcohol content allowed by Kansas law.
Frame was named a special prosecutor in the case by Ford County Attorney Terry Malone, who, citing a conflict of interest, moved the case to Edwards County.
James has worked for the Ford County Attorney's office since 2010, exclusively prosecuting suspected gang members.
He won the Kiowa County Attorney primary election on Aug. 7 against incumbent Candace Lattin and is running unopposed in the November general election.
Abigail Wilson of the Dodge City Daily Globe contributed to this report.


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Not this year.
For his actual birthday, we just had the small family affair - like we've normally been having the past few years. He made his own cake as is his wont, and as you can see he even did his own decorating this year. That was possibly the CRUNCHIEST red velvet cake you ever had, due to the amazing quantity of sprinkles on top.
We got him his heart's desire, a NERF GUN which he has asked for literally for the past two years. It's hilarious and huge and despite my VERY anti-gun opinions, I'm afraid it tickles me a bit. I don't know why. Can you tell he liked it?
He took it outside and shot up the worlds largest mushroom that was growing in our front yard. THAT will teach you, damned fungi!
You might think that this was a pretty nice birthday - but we wanted to do something special - something different - because this little boy is different, IS special in ways I cannot adequately share in words.
So we rented a train car at the Southeastern Railway Museum north of Atlanta.
And we invited his friends and classmates to come and share in our joy - which they did with great enthusiasm.
Why? Why a second party, that is pretty lavish and full of excitement for a little boy who already had a pretty darned good birthday? Why SPOIL him?
Because ladies of the jury, this child is not spoiled in his life. His entire life revolves around accommodations for two demanding special needs brothers. "Change the channel, that show is upsetting your brother - I don't CARE change it now!" "Just give him the toy, you can play with it later!" "Put that away, don't play with it now, it's pieces are too small - Lil Birdman will eat the pieces!" "Pick up the pieces of that broken toy so no one eats it - quick get them!" "Watch your brothers Mommy and Daddy will be in the kitchen."
He's their keeper, their warden, their guardian angel. He gives up and gives up and gives up. He shares bites of food and treats when they have eaten all of theirs and want more. He is patient with them, especially when they are unreasonable to the point of insanity.
So we played games, and had a really expensive fancy birthday cake complete with a dinosaur that lept from the cake and roared (ok that was REALLY cool) and we got to tour ALL of the trains in the museum......
And to end our day, we got to ride on a real train - all of the kids piling into the gondola on top of the caboose, to ride up on top looking out the windows at the freezing rain that was falling outside.
This child is some days like a small saint to me, despite his flawed human self - who is in fact only seven. As I watched the other children at the party I really understood how different he is, and how different his life is. He doesn't have the LUXURY of selfishness or even the opportunity to be ME centered the way the other children do. It makes me sad - but in a lot of ways it makes me proud. I think in the long run it will make him a better person.
Thus - once in a while, this child gets his hearts desire. Because this is right and just.


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Wind of Lara Hotel & SPA in Turkey overcomes the challenges of large-scale connectivity project with extensive solution build upon Zyxel technologies.


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- Tech Trader Daily
ALU: Evercore Impressed with 'Nuage' Soft Networking Presentation
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Shares of Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) are up a penny, or 0.4%, at $1.32, following an event in Silicon Valley yesterday to announce "Nuage Networks," an effort to sell gear for so-called "software defined networks," or SDN, an emerging area of competition between box makers. The press release for the announcement is posted on the company's Web site.
Alcatel said trials of the unit's "Virtualized Services Platform" will start this month with U.S. and European telcos such as Exponential-e, SFR, TELUS and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, with worldwide availability by the middle of the year.
Evercore Partners's Mark McKechnie, who was at the event, which he describes as little-attended by Wall Street, today reiterates an Overweight rating and a $2 price target on Alcatel stock, writing that the details at the event seem to him a "sound" strategy.
The company aims to make it easier for companies to buy servers instead of buying routers from Cisco Systems (CSCO) and others:
ALU's CTO articulated its corporate vision for SDN / NFV (network functions virtualization) strategy which included a well thought out balance / mix-shift of comms equipment to compute (servers) from fixed-function hardware (networking). The company expects high-bandwidth applications which support video / web access with edge and core routers to remain on purpose built / NPU-based hardware for the long-term, but a shift towards general-purpose servers / CPU-based solutions for lower bandwidth applications such as machine-to-machine and network applications with deep-packet-inspection (DPI) in the middle.
Alcatel's presentation yesterday in fact follows a Cisco presentation on SDN Monday in New York, which was hosted by UBS analyst Amitabh Passi.
McKechnie also offers some color from Alcatel about its own enterprise router offering, about whose progress the company was upbeat, he writes:
ALU is surprisingly optimistic in its core router prospects versus both JNPR and CSCO where it believes it will take share in 2013 and beyond. As of Feb 19th 2013, the 7950 XRS is in 20 commercial trials and has been selected by 6 customers. However, as of that date, the company has only announced 3 public wins. (1) Verizon (2) Telefonica (3) Belgacom. And, on March 5th, announced a 4th win at UPMC (a healthcare provider in Western Pennsylvania). ALU believes relative margins are best for the edge-routers, slightly lower for core routers, and the lowest for backhaul / aggregation, but still well above ALU's corporate average in the high 20's. We see ALU's IP division as a key contributor to our sum-of-parts valuation of $2.50+, as we conservatively attribute 1x CY13 sales as contributing $3B or $1.30 per share, which we believe can be unlocked given ALU's improved balance sheet and a recovering global capex cycle.
Update: Raymond James's Simon Leopold was similarly impressed, writing this morning that the capabilities of Nuage seem to outpace those of rivals.
Leopold, who has an Outperform rating on Alcatel stock, and a $2.50 price target, writes,
Although the concept of virtualization is not new, Nuage's approach seems to differentiate itself from current solutions by working with existing infrastructure in a multi-supplier environment. The application provides an abstraction to simplify networks and automation to ease service creation and operation. Nuage announced its Virtualized Services Platform (VSP), which in contrast to existing solutions has the ability to offer Virtual Machines (VM) connectivity and mobility across datacenters, seamless integration with service provider MPLS VPNs, integrated Layer 2-4 network virtualization, while having an open standards control plane that works with any vendor's hardware. Although the Nuage VSP platform has trials, wide-scale adoption is likely years away.


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COLUMBUS, Ohio, Feb. 26 (UPI) -- Loui Eriksson's score on a rebound with 1:57 left in overtime Tuesday lifted the Dallas Stars over Columbus 5-4.
On the winning play, Derek Roy collected a pass from Brenden Dillon and launched a shot at Sergei Bobrovsky, who made the initial stop. But Eriksson was there for the rebound, poking it under the Columbus goalie's right pad for the game-winner.
Roy, Cody Eakin, Antoine Roussel each registered a goal and an assist for Dallas, which won for only the third time in seven contests.
Brenden Morrow also scored and Richard Bachman made 16 stops for the Stars.
Derek Dorsett, Cam Atkinson, Nikita Nikitin and R.J. Umberger all scored for Columbus.
Bobrovsky finished with 34 saves.


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Uzbek "Taste of" Workshop
with Damira
Workshop full
|11 years old+
|Elevator available
|55 St (D) New Utrecht Ave (N)
I loved my first experience with League of Kitchens and cannot wait to tell everyone I know. I really enjoyed the small class and how personal Damira was--she really opened herself up, speaking about Uzbek culture, offering her own childhood stories growing up in Uzbekistan. I love that the focus is not just about food-- what makes this special is the human connection; I loved learning more about Damira, her family, and life in Uzbekistan."
Jenn T.


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A collection of scholarly works about individual liberty and free markets. A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.
The "Summa Theologica" of St. Thomas Aquinas. Part I. Literally translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Second and revised edition (London: Burns Oates and Washbourne, 1920-1922). 10 vols. https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1978,
A multi-volume collection of Aquinas' greatest work on philosophy and theology.
The text is in the public domain.
This material is put online to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. Unless otherwise stated in the Copyright Information section above, this material may be used freely for educational and academic purposes. It may not be used in any way for profit.


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NFL analyst: Stephen Morris may be college football's most talented QB
Miami's Stephen Morris threw for 3,345 yards and 21 touchdowns during the 2012 season. (Geoff Burke/Getty Images)
By Zac Ellis
Early NFL mock drafts for 2014 feature plenty of the expected college quarterbacks, from Louisville's Teddy Bridgewater to Clemson's Tajh Boyd to Texas A&M's Johnny Manziel. But one name might be higher than we might think, in terms of talent: Miami's Stephen Morris.
NFL Network analyst Bucky Brooks attended the Manning Passing Academy over the weekend and offered his thoughts on the crop of collegiate passers. Even among some of the country's most high-profile quarterbacks, the Hurricanes' second-year starter displayed enough natural talent to stand out in Brooks' mind.
Stephen Morris might be the most talented quarterback in college football. I say that even while fully aware of the gifted passers across the college football landscape. The Miami signal-caller's natural talents made him stand out above the rest of his peers at the throwing exhibition at the Manning Passing Academy. Morris spins the ball with exceptional velocity and zip while showing a deft touch on intermediate and deep passes. Most impressively, he is deadly accurate, capable of making pinpoint throws to every area of the field. This was evident not only when Morris won the air-it-out competition by hitting a variety of moving targets, but also when he connected with receivers on a number of intermediate throws, particularly on deep comebacks and digs.
After cross-referencing the notes from my evaluation of Morris' game tape with my observations of his performance at the Manning Passing Academy, I believe he could rate as one of the top pure passers in college football. He is an outstanding rhythm passer who displays terrific anticipation, awareness and timing in the pocket. Although he only has one year of starting experience at Miami, Morris' remarkable physical tools and superb game-management skills could garner him high rankings on quarterback lists around the NFL.
Morris might not be a household name, but he was hardly a slouch in his first season as a starter in Coral Gables. He threw for 3,345 yards and 21 touchdowns against only seven interceptions in 2012, and the Hurricanes enjoyed the third most potent passing attack (295.4 yards per game) in the ACC.
What likely impressed most about Morris was his improvement as the 2012 season progressed. In Miami's final four games, Morris completed 60 percent of his passes and didn't throw an interception while tossing for 11 touchdowns. The 'Canes themselves went 3-1 in those games, and Morris and the offense helped carry the team in spite of an awful defense.
But why don't we hear Morris' name mentioned among the country's top quarterbacks? Miami's relative mediocrity as a program in 2012 probably played a part; though the Hurricanes tied for first place in the ACC's Coastal Division at 7-5 (5-3), postseason ineligibility kept the team out of the conference title game. The porous defense -- which allowed 486.4 yards per game, good for 116th in the country -- turned potentially winnable games against Florida State and Virginia into losses, and you didn't hear much fanfare surrounding this five-loss ACC squad.
But Morris himself still found ways to impress with his individual statistics. It's worth comparing Morris' 2012 season to that of three of the more prolific passers in the nation heading into the fall:
Stephen Morris: 245-of-421 (58.2), 3,345, 7.9/catch, long pass: 87, 21 TDs-7 INT, 138.1 rating
Teddy Bridgewater: 287-of-419 (68.5), 3,718, 8.87/ catch, long pass: 75, 27 TDs-8 INTs, 160.5 rating
Tajh Boyd: 287-of-427, 3,896 (67.2), 9.12/catch, long pass:69, 36 TDS-13 INTs, 165.6 rating
Johnny Manziel: 295-of-434, 3,706 (68.0), 8.54/catch, long pass: 89 26 TDs-9 TDs, 155.3 rating
One factor that sticks out is Morris' accuracy. With a 58.2 percent completion rating, the quarterback ranked a paltry 81st among last year's signal-callers. His quarterback rating of 138.1 was likewise mediocre, falling just outside the top 50 at No. 51. Morris hardly jumps out with such numbers, yet he managed to keep his interceptions rather low (seven) despite throwing more passes than Bridgewater and just short of the number of attempts by Boyd and Manziel. What that means is Morris limits turnovers even though he's not among the top-tier quarterbacks in efficiency, which is exactly what Brooks alludes to when he describes Morris and his "superb game-management skills." Such a moniker bodes well for a career in the NFL.
Pro scouts love quarterbacks who are poised and controlled in the pocket, and there are plenty of reasons to assume that Morris' accuracy and production will rise in the fall. Miami returns all five of its offensive line starters, while the team's top two receivers -- Phillip Dorsett and Rashawn Scott -- also return. Throw in a complementary rushing attack in tailback Duke Johnson (947 yards, 10 TDs in 2012), and this offense could once again find itself among the top units in the ACC with Morris as one of the headliners.


text: Show Hide image Culture 24 January 2013 Something nasty in the Wodehouse "Blandings" and "Utopia" reviewed. Sign-up Blandings; Utopia BBC1; Channel 4 For future reference, here is my cut-out-andkeep guide to brilliant, funny books that have never and will never, work on television, no matter how much the director adores them, no matter how hard the producer laughed when he first read them, no matter how much this star, or that star, longs to bring such and such beloved character to life. It goes like this: the novels of Nancy Mitford; Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons; The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith; Money by Martin Amis; the Just William stories of Richmal Crompton; and, most importantly, anything at all by tempting old P G Wodehouse. Please, television commissioning editors, do feel free to cut this out and stick it in your wallets along with the photographs of little Otto and your place in Sussex. You will save us all an awful lot of pain if you do. It is Blandings (Sundays, 6.30pm), the BBC's new adaptation of Wodehouse's stories about the eccentric inhabitants of Blandings Castle, that has provoked me to write this list – and if you watched it too, you will know why. Piles is funnier than Blandings. So is a Cannon and Ball DVD or a Tom Sharpe novel. When Danny Cohen, the controller of BBC1, says that Wodehouse brings sunshine into people's lives, he is quite right. You could always tell when my father was reading Wodehouse: his laughter was so explosive, his Dr Scholl sandals would sometimes fly from his feet (yes, you read that right; this was the Seventies and he was a university lecturer). But television adaptations of Wodehouse bring only clouds. Clouds of depression and existential angst. How, you wonder, as you watch yet another masterclass in Great British Overacting, was this ever allowed to happen? This version of the Blanding stories has been dramatised by Guy Andrews, the man who brought us Lost in Austen. It's not his fault that books whose genius lies in their tone lose 90 per cent of that genius when you reduce them only to dialogue. What chutzpah to imagine that you will be the one to get round this essential conundrum. Timothy Spall is Lord Emsworth, who wants only to be left alone with his prize pig, the Empress; Jennifer Saunders is his sister, Constance; and Mark Williams is Beach the butler. Spall is fine, though I believe in him as a toff not at all. The other two seem to have just strolled in off their old sketch shows; they're manic and cardboardlike at the same time, which is quite some feat. Jack Farthing does a nice turn as Lord Emsworth's dumbo son, Freddie – tinkety tonk! – but his energy has nowhere to go and you can sort of see that he knows this. He looks panicky and uncomfortable. The pig is excellent. The first episode included not one but two lame jokes about her extraordinarily euphonic farts, which seemed a bit desperate in a half-hour show. But she put in a stand-out performance: nuanced, vivid, even plangent at times. And now I'm going to move on because, honestly, what else can I say? Blandings is so bad, even a pig is embarrassed by it. Channel 4 has a new series, Utopia, that it seems to be spinning as State of Play for a new generation (and isn't it amazing – naming no names – how some journalists just lap this stuff up?). I was all set to enjoy it mightily. I love conspiracy dramas and I love graphic novels, and this is a conspiracy drama about a graphic novel, so it might have been written for me (it's by Dennis Kelly, who is best known for his plays and for writing Pulling with Sharon Horgan). Yet it's not as clever as, I suspect, it thinks it is and it's pointlessly, horribly violent. Its zeitgeisty preoccupation with 21st-century anxieties makes it feel overloaded, too. Mutant genes, internet privacy, rising food prices, flu vaccines; all the madness is here. Will I stick with it? I suppose so. It looks lovely (apart from the gore), and there are chirpy performances from Alexandra Roach, Adeel Akhtar and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as the trio of comic-books nerds. More to the point, I've just finished my Mad Men box set. What else is a girl to do these bleak January evenings? Rachel Cooke trained as a reporter on The Sunday Times. She is now a writer at The Observer. In the 2006 British Press Awards, she was named Interviewer of the Year. Subscribe For more great writing from our award-winning journalists subscribe for just £1 per month! This article first appeared in the 21 January 2013 issue of the New Statesman, The A-Z of Israel SUBSCRIBE More