Farsi for the foolish.
Just read a very puzzling item in the April 2009 (Vol. 318, No. 1907) issue of Harper's Magazine, in its "Findings" feature, wherein the editors offer tidbits of the most interesting articles from various scientific and technical journals from the previous month:
"In western Iran, the growing popularity of taqaandan, a pastime in which the top half of the of the erect penis is wrenched sharply to one side and 'popped,' and which has led to an epidemic of penile fractures, was becoming a public health concern. 'The practice of taqaandan is increasing,' said urologist Javaad Zargooshi, 'and we don't know why.'"
-- p. 84
Man. What does it say about a society when its men voluntarily break their wienies as a common "pastime"? Taqaandan sounds like something that Catherine Bell would do to you if she caught you cheating on her.
The other two items in the same paragraph, immediately after the aforementioned puzzler, are also interesting:
"The Persian army was found to have used poisonous gas on Roman troops in its 256 A.D. siege of the city of Dura, and a 2,700-year old marijuana stash discovered in the Gobi Desert was judged to be of high quality."
So the Persians -- at this point they were Sassanids, or Sassanians -- stole quite a march on the Mongols: the Mongols are thought to the be the first people to have practiced biological warfare, by catapulting plague-infested corpses over the walls of the cities they besieged, but that was a thousand years after the Persians used poison gas, give or take a decade or two. My next question is, what gas did the Sassanids use against the Romans?
As for the other item -- wooowwww, man, it's amazing what a dry climate can preserve, man. Deserts are like Mother Nature's Tupperware, man.
"In western Iran, the growing popularity of taqaandan, a pastime in which the top half of the of the erect penis is wrenched sharply to one side and 'popped,' and which has led to an epidemic of penile fractures, was becoming a public health concern. 'The practice of taqaandan is increasing,' said urologist Javaad Zargooshi, 'and we don't know why.'"
-- p. 84
Man. What does it say about a society when its men voluntarily break their wienies as a common "pastime"? Taqaandan sounds like something that Catherine Bell would do to you if she caught you cheating on her.
The other two items in the same paragraph, immediately after the aforementioned puzzler, are also interesting:
"The Persian army was found to have used poisonous gas on Roman troops in its 256 A.D. siege of the city of Dura, and a 2,700-year old marijuana stash discovered in the Gobi Desert was judged to be of high quality."
So the Persians -- at this point they were Sassanids, or Sassanians -- stole quite a march on the Mongols: the Mongols are thought to the be the first people to have practiced biological warfare, by catapulting plague-infested corpses over the walls of the cities they besieged, but that was a thousand years after the Persians used poison gas, give or take a decade or two. My next question is, what gas did the Sassanids use against the Romans?
As for the other item -- wooowwww, man, it's amazing what a dry climate can preserve, man. Deserts are like Mother Nature's Tupperware, man.