Wow, this really looks great. I was thinking about traveling there as well, but couldn't convince any friend. They had doubts if it was secure enough. Is it? I still want to go one day. I have also been to Tashkent once, and it is just so different from anything you have seen so far, and so beautiful.
Unequivocally, there's no safety situation in Iran.
It's probably best to add an asterisk: Assuming you're not hanging around the Iraq / Afghani borders.
Iran is a beautiful country with a big PR problem.
Yes the government sucks, but it's just a government. It will pass. The persian culture has survived for thousands of years, and they have a lot to show for it.
They're not 'fantatical muslims'. In fact, islam was only introduced after the arabs invaded.
The best part about countries with PR problems is that if you do bother to make the effort to understand and to go there - everyone is very, very happy to see, meet, chat, help etc with you - because they know that just by being there, you understand a little bit of their culture.
Finally, now is the moment to go there. With the embargos falling, and the embassies opening etc, Iran will be flooded with tourists, and this unique eco-system will be permanently changed.
I'm taking my parents there this year for that reason alone..
Relations between the two tribes go back at least 3000 years if not earlier. (The city of Rages, then Ray, and now a suburb of Teheran, apparently had a substantial Jewish community during the Median period, per Book of Tobit [2]) Typically quite friendly and simpatico.
Many of the features of Second Temple Judaism (and hence Christianity) were thought to have been influenced by Zoroastrianism, from the time of the Babylonian Captivity onwards.
One must be very careful when determining the level of influence as this can often be quite an emotionally charged topic with interests that go beyond the purely academic on both sides.
Some of the ideas that area said to be influential, historically don't appear fully formed in Zoroastrianism until after contact with Christianity. Like the other religions, Zoroastrianism did not appear in its modern form but gradually evolved some of its modern ideas.
"Persian" is a historical mistake started by Herodotus, Iran was Iran from the begining. start to learn the proper name after a long time 2500+ years is a long time.
You are correct that Iran has always been called Iran (Eraan).
Persians refer to the sub-set of Aryanman of Eran-Zameen ["Land of Arya"] that settled in the general area of the province of Fars (Perse) and after the overthrow of the Median Aryanman (likely forefathers of the Kurds) ascended the world stage [1].
I hope they will live there too. I look forward to the day where repatriation occurs en masse from the US. I think it would allow the return of intelligentsia as well skill labor to areas that sorely need it. While I admit there will be a loss for the US, I doubt that whole extended families will up and leave. In the end, I hope that it will lead to a better understanding and camaraderie for US and formerly hostile countries.
Iran is a beautiful country, I'd like to go back sometime. Here are some of my favorite pictures from my time there which I sometimes use for design inspiration: http://imgur.com/a/ll2no. I put some of them through Google Deep Dream for some strange results: http://imgur.com/a/xIro8, http://imgur.com/a/iwawP
Incidentally, my first pen was a red Lamy, back in France where children were required (still are?) to use fountain pens. I had no idea it was a classic or famous in anyway. A very solid pen which can withstand a lot of chewing.
Fascinating place! On a related note HONY is currently doing Iran (http://www.humansofnewyork.com/), you should check it out if you haven't done so for the intimate portraits or regular people.
The blogger at Poemas del río Wang is a personal friend of mine. (Sometimes I also write for his blog.) By profession he is a translator and art historian, a Hungarian by birth living in Berlin. I have gone on many of his tours, and travelled with him personally as well. I can unreservedly recommend his tours, but they fill up quickly. Most of the participants are Hungarian speakers, but he can translate on the fly into English, and other languages, too.
Incidentally, I wanted to go on this trip, but as a US passport holder, I would not be free to go wherever I want without an Iranian-appointed guide on a limited itinerary (at least as I understand the situation).
I think of Iran as desert (a particularly beautiful one, judging from the pictures), but I can't imagine Persia having the resources from a desert to become a world power. Was the area of Iran always a desert?
Ancient Iranians were hackers in the best sense [1], and experts at long range transport of water. Water was conveyed from the Alborz mountain range all the way to the south. The mongols destroyed much of this network (that was still functional after a thousand years) and that pretty much put an end to verdant growth in the central and easter regions.
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
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In addition to koenigdavidmj's correct answer, maybe I'll repeat something I posted yesterday:
If there's something we could do to get more high-quality links posted about history, arts and letters, geography, anthropology, etc.—the myriads of interesting stories outside HN's couple of core grooves—I would love to hear about it. We rarely have enough of those.
It's like procedural generation meets the clone stamp tool.
http://travel.ninjito.com/2014-08-18-Iran