Math Nerd Invokes Tank Man

Encouraging story from Iran, where star math student Mahmoud Vahidnia confronted Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on national television last week, challenging Khamenei on free press, free expression, and the crackdown on last summer's protests.

More encouraging, a week later Vahinia appears to remain not only alive, but free from a jail cell.

Comments

[John Tagliaferro]

More encouraging, a week later Vahinia appears to remain not only alive, but free from a jail cell.

It may just be a delay with the police union stalling for more benifits. Stay tuned.

[Mango Punch]

Or said math dude is building Iran a nuke

[Ratko]

Missed reading your comment before posting mine. My thoughts were the same.

[ed]

"Tank Man" would make a good movie. Picture a modern-day Ninotchka, but instead of a crazy woman who thinks she's Russian royalty, we get a crazy (or is he?) Chinaman, working in a San Francisco laundry, who claims he's the iconic protester. But nobody believes him! Sad and funny! Can't miss, bay-bee.

I think you're misremembering the film...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031725/

[ed]

No. I referenced that movie.

[ed]

Fuck. You're right. I meant Anastasia.

That's okay. Ninotchka is a great film. Very pro Free-market Capitalism.

[ed]

Indeed. It was OK to mock the Soviets then.

Even Disney on Ice no longer mocks the Soviets. So sad.

[Episiarch]

Throw in a mummy or some other kind of monster (possibly Rosie O'Donnell or Uwe Boll) and you've got a Chinese Bubba Ho-tep.

[ed]

Rosie O'Donnell would make the perfect wife of Jabba The Hutt.*

*Or is he just Jabba Hutt now, like Smokey Bear?

[Pro Libertate]

I'd like to see a full-length movie treatment of that old Calgon commercial: "My husband--some hotshot. Here's his ancient Chinese secret: Calgon!"

[pmp]

Courage is an underappreciated virtue.

Maybe someone could politely-but-firmly confront President Obama in the same way?

[ed]

Seriously. The reporter at a live press conference who asks: "Sir, with all due respect, aren't you pulling those economic forecasts out of your ass?" would be a hero of the greatest magnitude.

[PFJ]

And then we would tape it! And put it on youtube!

[Crass]

Obama welcomes criticism! Just not from the GOP, Fox News, libertarians, Tea Partiers, the far left, and people that don't agree with him.

[CoyoteBlue]

Just look how well things went for that plumber guy who asked some inconvient questions. Isn't he going to be on the SuperBowl pre-game show?

[JB]

I would love to see someone throw their shoes at Obama.

[Rimfax]

Klansman!

[?]

The reporter at a live press conference who asks: "Sir, with all due respect, aren't you pulling those economic forecasts out of your ass?" would be a hero of the greatest magnitude.

That's un-fucking-imaginable. But Vahidnia is real.

We have a less solvable problem than Iran does.

[ed]

A guy can dream, can't he?

[ed]

Hell, I'd settle for a shoe thrown in his general direction.

[JB]

Definitely. Watching Leftist hypocrites jizz on themselves criticizing it would be hilarious.

[prolefeed]

Actually, we can boot politicians out of office, including Obama in 3 years. The supreme religious leader of Iran? Not so much so, short of a revolution.

[wylie]

Yeah, we can boot them out, and get replacements who do the same or worse....

Seems like Iran has it better, since revolution is still actually an option over there.

[Thomas]

In related news:

http://www.voanews.com/english.....-voa22.cfm

[ed]

Friggin' Iranian teabaggers!

[Hugh Akston]

More encouraging, a week later Vahinia appears to remain not only alive, but free from a jail cell.

Just wait until the Iranian section of Mathnet gets enough evidence to put him away.

[Abdul]

Sheesh, that's one mathlete that's tired of being shaken down for his milk money.

You go, spazzwad!

[JB]

Iran is run by such retarded despicable bastards that they even kill the lawyers representing people who were arrested for protesting.

[sage]

And where is "Tank Man" these days? Math Nerd should be asking himself that. My guess is that he's both dead AND in a jail cell.

[R C Dean]

I don't think anyone even knows who he was.

Well, anyone outside the Chinese secret police, anyway.

[John Tagliaferro]

Thought he got run over after a while?

[Pro Libertate]

It was David Lo Pan.

[Thomas]

No offense, but I always thought it looked like a "Tank Woman".

[sage]

None taken. It wasn't me!

[hurly buehrle]

Easily Lori Petty's best movie.

[Mango Punch]

I'd say he took a calculated risk

[Ratko]

Looks like you beat me to the punch, Mango. Superb play on words.

[Mango Punch]

Someone was bound to critisize Khamenei, it was in the numbers

[ChrisO]

Mathematics is clearly a crusader plot to undermine the glory of Islam.

[Mango Punch]

What does this equate to in US politics?

[Mango Punch]

it was Prime time someone stood up

[Mango Punch]

what an odd occurance

[Mango Punch]

Khamenei will get even

[Mango Punch]

Mahmoud is counting on his popularity to keep him out of trouble

[Ratko]

Holy shiznit, you're a virtual cornucopia of word play!

[John Tagliaferro]

Odd turn of events.

[Rimfax]

Khamenei seemed to think that his criticisms were derivative, but the student seemed to think that they were integral to modern democracy.

[Pro Libertate]

Throw in a mummy or some other kind of monster (possibly Rosie O'Donnell or Uwe Boll) and you've got a Chinese Bubba Ho-tep.

Episiarch,

I'd like to see a full-length movie treatment of that old Calgon commercial: "My husband--some hotshot. Here's his ancient Chinese secret: Calgon!"

[Ratko]

Thanks for the heads up, Radley. I hadn't seen this story on any of my news services yet.

For now it might not be wise to become too encouraged by the news, however, until we learn more.

It's not like as if say you were Khamenei and were narrowly focused upon getting your little Mahdi kid who has been hiding in a well for a thousand years to come out by developing nukes because you know nuking people is just the encouragement the kid needs to quit hiding down there in the well, and there's no mathematics involved in building atomic bombs or the rockets to accurately deliver them to target, so you'd give the pollice verso on the kid without hesitation, would you? (Not that you are the Khamenei type, you're his polar opposite. Just looking for possible motives that could help explain Khamenei's unexpected response)

It would be my guess that there has never been a finer time in Iran than now to have your multiplication tables memorized.

For now, Mahmoud Vahidnia may just be too valuable to snuff.

After the Mahdi recieves word that the nukes have been detonated and climbs out of the well, he could find himself on the top of the executioner's 'things to do today' list.

[SugarFree]

Why didn't anyone tell me it was Post While On Mescaline Day?

I go on a short little vacation and you guys fucking exclude me. Assholes.

[Cabeza de Vaca]

"Why didn't anyone tell me it was Post While On Mescaline Day?"

I thought that was everyday around here.

[SugarFree]

That's what the little Madhi in the well told you to say.

[Cabeza de Vaca]

I am the little Mahdi.

[SugarFree]

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together

[John Tagliaferro]

-1

[John Tagliaferro]

I have a rating for you but the server thought it was the spam.

-1

[Ratko]

People would be a lot less karmically(if it's not a word it should be) constipated if everyday was Mescaline Day.

Legal disclaimer: I do not encourage the use of illicit drugs, nor are the opinions I post mine or in any way reflective of those of my own.

Not sure where that came from, must be the Mescaline talking.

The Mahdi information was shared with me by my Iranian dissadent friend, He's the most knowledgable person I know on these matters, being well educated, intelligent, and having first hand experience in Iran and with the Iranian government.

I'm not sure how many peyote buttons he's chewed.

[Warty]

Intimidation is an integral part of Iranian politics.

[Mango Punch]

Some might say it's the root of their problems

[Warty]

Their system, after all, is derived from from thousands of years of corruption.

[Ratko]

True, corruption increased [I]expotentionally[/I] after Xerxes I.

[Ratko]

If not html tags then what?

[Yerbaff]

HTML tags?

[Mango Punch]

greater than and less than signs not "["

[Warty]

I'd say things in Iran have reached their limit.

[Groovus Maximus]

These things are derivative of the current set of circumstances.

[BakedPenguin]

I'd like to see a full-length movie treatment of that old Calgon commercial: "My husband--some hotshot. Here's his ancient Chinese secret: Calgon!"

His real not-so-ancient Chinese secret is that he's running heroin for Hong Kong triad gangs, disguised as soap powder.

Whenever the customs guys or narcs get suspicious, he goes to them and says "ancient Chinese secret!", and they start cracking up and let his stuff through.

(announcer voice) But then one day, One Man showed up in the DEA. A man who'd never seen those commercials...

[Pro Libertate]

That might work. Just so long as there's room in it for cameos by Lo Pan and Jack Burton.

[Warty]

His speech was a little on the Heaviside.

[Xeones]

You guys need to quit going off on tangents.

[Dagny T.]

Math puns? Think I'll sine off now.

[Aresen]

If the set of people here can't stay in their field, things are going to get a lot tensor. In sum, there are limits to what can be scaled.

[Pro Libertate]

Asymptoteholes!

[Ali Khamenei]

They're PERSIAN numerals, NOT Arabic.
Just saying.

[Pro Libertate]

Actually, you bad, bad, man, they're Indian.

[Pro Libertate]

Actually, you bad, bad man, they're Indian.

[Pro Libertate]

Egad.

[Rimfax]

Khamenei sounded all reasonable until his toady begged to kiss his hand. That undermined everything that Khamenei said. It's hard to be convincing that you're open to criticism when one of your sycophants interrupts your response by kissing your ass.

Khamenei appeared to realize this and insulted the guy by merely leaving his hanky behind for the guy to whack off in. I suspect that that is some form of faint response protocol to politely say that he wasn't really fond of the guy at that moment.

[Andrew Lynch]

Oh, Radley, you reveal yourself with posts like this. You can find a ray of light in a land of daaaaaarkness, but you find nothing but darkness in an American law-enforcement landscape. You define cherry picker. Where were/are you on all of Iran's other rights-oppression problems? Might even make your head explode on Monday mornings.

[Naga Sadow]

Fuck everyone who made jokes about the tank dude. To think. Such a fucking man in our lifetime existed. A lion among men. That he actually walked this earth in my time. I'm deeply humbled by his very existence. The shit he pulled. It's donwnright unbelievable. It's stuff you read about in history. Horatio at the bridge is as close as I can come to a modern equivalent. As I've stated in the past, that was a BAD motherfucker.

[BakedPenguin]

I get goosebumps when I think of the first time I saw that footage from Tienanmen. The pure courage that must have taken, the belief that right can conquer over evil. I was reminded of him seeing coverage of the Iranian protesters today.

It shames me when I don't have the courage to speak out against asinine opinions voiced with mindless conviction in my (relatively) comfortable life.

[Naga Sadow]

BP,

I'm not big into personel heroes and such. But if there was ever an inspiration in this world for me; it was him. What I find crazy is that everyone I know that I've expressed this idea to thinks the guy was stupid. "I wouldn't do that, so it must be crazy". Well, yeah. That's the whole point retard. A man drew his line in the sand. It was crossed and . . . something . . . unbelievable happened. It's what makes it special.

[paul]

great! he is not a Nerd, just math good guy.