
An ancient engineering feat that harnessed the wind - MiriamWeiner
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180926-an-ancient-engineering-feat-that-harnessed-the-wind
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dmos62
Persian wind catchers were discussed a few months ago here [0].

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17384177](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17384177)

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pjc50
A coincidence, yesterday I was watching Joanna Lumley's travel programme
visiting Yazd and other places in Iran:
[https://www.itv.com/presscentre/ep3week39/joanna-lumleys-
sil...](https://www.itv.com/presscentre/ep3week39/joanna-lumleys-silk-road-
adventure)

It's a striking place and I'd love for it to be safe to visit there.

~~~
forvelin
We have been there with my girlfriend a year ago. Tehran is a fairly safe
place, not that 'tourist oriented' and only seriously annoying thing was
traffic as we were not expecting such time to go waste in hours of traffic
jams. We intend to visit Isfahan next and hope it is better.

Food, people, museums, landmarks, stuff you find in markets and once more
people are quite awesome. As soon as you look like a lost tourist, people
attempt to help you 'genuinely'. They try to chat with you everywhere and show
that their country is nice, unlike how they paint it in western media.

~~~
icebraining
Regarding western media, I can't say I get that impression in my corner of
western europe; the image I see is of a nice place with nice people, and a
messed up government. Even the online newspaper comments are usually nice!

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interfixus
This and many other of OP's submissions are definitely interesting. But I
notice all 179 of them - with possibly an exception or two - are BBC travel
stories, that OP has never submitted a single comment, and that someone with
the same name as OP is a deputy travel editor with the BBC.

This may all be quite in order, I just find it at a slightly odd angle to the
general way of things on HN.

~~~
simias
Good catch, but there doesn't appear to be any attempt at deception and it
doesn't really break any rules as far as I can tell. I suppose it could be
considered mildly spammy, but then again the articles submitted seem generally
to be high quality so as far as I'm concerned it's fine.

~~~
topoftheforts
Imho posting almost every day for 10 months is more than mildly spammy, I
agree that the articles are generally high quality but that's true of many
other publications. I have no idea if there's other people doing the same nor
if it's ok for HN's admins, but as a reader and user of the site I'm not
really ok with it, I think we should hold users to a higher standard.

If she wants to post every article from the BBC on HN she should at contribute
in other ways, commenting or posting other high quality sites. And again, this
is directed to any other users behaving in the same way.

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singularity2001
Meta: I applaud such an article about our friends past (and our own²) in times
when once again "the hate machine" tries to alienate us.

² Few people are aware of just how close the Iranians are to us historically,
culturally, genetically, and linguistically.

If it wasn't for the Muslim conquest of 651, we would immediately recognize
their words for family members:

Farsi | transcribed | english

مامان mâmân mother

مادر mâdar mother(formal)

بابا bâbâ father

پدر pedar father(formal)

دختر doxtar daughter

برادر barâdar brother

This of course is just the tip of the iceberg.

~~~
delinka
Who is “us” in your comment?

~~~
singularity2001
Us, the people

Iranians and English speaking people. I admit that the genetic link was not
helpful here.

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kwhitefoot
10 degrees? Is that Fahrenheit or Kelvin?

~~~
user812
The quoted link leads to the following study:

[http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0143624415603281...](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0143624415603281?journalCode=bsea&)

"Temperature and velocity profiles indicate an induced, cooler air breeze in
the courtyard; outside air is cooled from 46℃ to 34–38℃"

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subhrm
The article has no photograph of the "badgir" (wind catcher). I had to search
and see a few photographs to appreciate the design.

~~~
samontar
The article has no less than seven pictures. Perhaps it didn’t load for you?

~~~
subhrm
Yes. I could see the images on my mobile browser. The very aggressive
corporate proxy was probably blocking the images on my work machine.

