nimamoinpour-blog

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Coridors

This book must be a great allegory to the You Tube- Vimeo structural analysis project where these two online environments will be analyzed and drawn. Will it look like a bazzar? Will it look like a town? It will be about halls, gates and ultimately coridors. More to come. 

http://www.academia.edu/1338603/Corridor_Spaces

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As a Crisis Mappers Conference Graduate Student Attendee I had the opportunity to take a collaborative mapping challenge in Union Square. Since the topic was all about Human Centered Mapping, the challenge was to identify key attributes of Union Square for a hypothetical crisis situation. We picked a power grid outage. Here' the map we made on Google Map Maker and below are some of the attributes we discovered:

Homeless are signals but they are often invisible. They can also be great assets to understand a space as they are the most resourceful and connected to the surrounding environment. They occupy busy intersections where there is most foot traffic. If time is the scarce resource you don't need to study every channel of traffic instead focus on where they homeless have strategically placed themselves instead. Beside being in-tune with the social structure of an environment, they are also in-tune with the physical/natural space as well. The last picture is the South wall of the famous (first Barnes & Nobles) where the homeless sit to bathe in the sun. During a hypothetical power outage, setting up safety/treatment area (solar panels) on that wall should be an immediately inspired by picking up these signals. 

Beside the homeless we identified that the spots that already have a certain function do so because of the geophysical attributes so the announcements during a crisis should take place on the same platforms, gatherings in the same busy corners and walkways, well in the same walkways. 

The conference itself was very fruitful and I learned about a lot of different organizations such as Standby Task Force and Digital Humanitarians. I also learned a lot of awesome platforms that I didn't know about before such Stamenmap, Cartodb, Open Street Map and ESRI's Story Map. Last but not least I learned about Emotional Mapping and the field of Developmental Studies which intrigued me to investigate European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI).

Overall a great practical skill and networking opportunity in place making and I am very thankful to have been able to experience it. 

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It make sense now why people leave New York City as an escape from the hustle and bustle. This weekend I had the opportunity to leave for Oneonta in upstate NY for a trans-disciplinary Small Place Identity Conference organized by Center for Social Science Research and Dr. Ho Hon Leung from the Sociology department. 

I learned about history and future plans for this town of long heritage, learned a little about measuring environmental identity, how natural landscape has a huge influence on local heritage, how place branding effects local economics and last but not least how local spots and food are such a long tradition in place making. 

My humble presentation focused on my transition from a large place (Tehran) to a small place in San Jose/Silicon Valley. In my presentation I included information about the positive consequences of paying attention to toponymy, getting to know the locals to understand local history, how 4th grade should be taught to every immigrant and how Silicon Valley has always been the host of forces of influence and cultivation for a long time now.

This conference gave me the opportunity to learn more about various fields such as museum studies, anthropology, architecture and place branding, and of course sociology. I learned concepts like civic capitalism and material culture in museum studies. 

I also made great connections from the SUNY system and got inspired by several undergraduate students from the local scene. The scenery was wild, architecture historic, and air quality serene. I will go back there soon to study it as an industrial frontier. 

[nimamoinpour-blog]

For life is that flow.

In the midst is where it begins.

The place we occupy is a passing constant and we its slave.

All rowers, all captains, each a lifeguard,

when the current gets tough we either seek the rock or ride it with awe.

It is fast, rapid, intense is this flow.

This dream I remember it as it already passed. Already was already fixed.

The pebbles enter the flow with no control.

They so small alter its course, all so subtle, so sudden.

Who may you be to call yourself the captain of the current.

I see no fear in my eyes for there is no instant of calm in this rapid matter.

No time for reflection whatsoever.

It is we who presume we have any sense of reflection at all.

The force is fast to distract away from the vein for vanities are when the flow is distracting with murky reflections of the pond.

That is why it gets intense: to give tense

to this past,

present future

segments we have attributed this unbreable continuum.

The best we can do is keep healthy and ride this rude, rad recall.

Hope to hit the rocks of epiphanies and dejavues as guards.

The surface sustains the original folk:

Maintain a constant state of revelation for truths will themselves for you thus then.

[nimamoinpour-blog]

Tesla's CEO warns that artificial intelligence is likely mankind's biggest threat.

My contemporaries regard it as the market but I see beyond its facade. A revolution has taken place and it is faith based once again. This world is a fight for belief. Propaganda as a force for systematic belief distribution and adaptation of such practice as a operative to the future success of that stream. 

Philosophy of technology and philosophy of religion both have faith at their main theme. They both have prophets (Mohammad or Jobs), they both have codes and scripts (Quran or Python), they both aggregate into tribes (Sunni vs. Shia) or (Apple or Google) [both propagating the belief system toward "salvation" strengthening one another in their dialectic oppositions: Converting non-believers to believers as non-users to users. They both occupy the minds and hearts through tactile invasion (rosary beads or haptic UX), they both control postures (prayers or head down, ear plugs) closing out the outside world for zoom focus and finally they both assert a sense of time (eternal universe, two worlds, 5 times a day prayer vs. constant now, checking in every 2 minutes)

1) Prophets, disciples 

2) scripts, languages  

3) tribes, ecosystems 

3) objects of prayer, haptics 

4) postures of worship  

5) sense of time 

The same way Quran studies promised salvation as well as economical gains, learning code is seen as the tool to salvation and a path to enlightenment and prosperity. Quran reading groups gathered, lead by an agent of piety, the students sat confused, nodding in agreement, posturing alliance. The very basic knowledge of jargon promised you passing of many gates and more firm handshakes. To be in was to become part of the revolution. 

Code learning, is a promise to understanding higher forms of the world. Formation of power groups and accessibility to influencing the metaphysical world. In martyrdom of code, mange pious agents delivered promise wrath to the underworld, sacrificing their eyes, blindly contributing to the fire, willing and collaborative. 

Agents of piety, immams, developers of congregations of following seat on higher pedestals, listening to the promised notes of salvation, constantly encourage others to join in to keep the stream of wrath going. This all is the mechanism of faith. Friday prayers or weekend hackathons, each propogate the stream. 

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“Principles of a-signifying rupture: against the over-signifying breaks separating structures or cutting across a single structure. A rhizome may be broken, shattered at a give spot, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines.

                                            -Gilles Deleuze

A river bed will always be a poised to host the stream. It, as it's final cause, is here to be the medium. A geologist's aim is to detract the story of a space through its material, formal and efficient causes. A judge accords the tale in a way to ascertain a things final cause. Every space, if studied genealogically, can be accorded and thus ascertained a finality. Though changes may occur along the way, an acorn is supposed to be one and only thing.  

In Farsi, language of Iran & Afghanistan, the countries of many peaks and valleys, estuaries and dried lands, river is "rood-khooneh." "Rood" translates to stream/flow, and "khooneh," home... Home of Flow. As the skies send the message down to the earth, earth accommodates this through its own materiality. Solid formations are set and piece with the fluidity of the flow for mutual sustenance of form's potential. 

Friedrich Kittler, in his "City as a Medium," first starts with the concept of Capital, then divides his text into the following headings: 

Technology: Information is at the core of the flow. 

"Regardless of whether these networks transmit information (telephone, radio, television) or energy (water supply, electricity, highway), they all represent forms of information.

He goes on to rightly point out that every modern energy flow requires a parallel control network.

"Even in those unthinkable times when energy still needed beasts of burden like Sinbad, and information required messengers like the first marathon runner, networks existed. They just hadn't been built yet or, in technician's jargon, implemented. The narrow, rugged mule trail was replaced by the railway and the highway, which in turn have been replaced by no less transient copper and fiber optic cables."

There has been many of times when the device was invented but the network wasn't available for hosting it. For example, it has been stated that Chopin wrote pieces that were ahead of the technical capacity of pianos at the time, and he wrote such pieces in anticipation of future hosting of such information in a new version of the piano. The introduction of such tokens sometimes reminds the world of the possibility of creating networks to suit the worthy new comer. The influence of new introductions can entice/force the creation of new parallels. 

Network: There is nothingness that networks fill. 

"To best reconstruct the way out of a labyrinth (as the Greeks were said to have done in reading the ruined foundations of Knossos, Phaistos, or Gournia), one doesn't need to sketch the still visible connecting walls, rather their inverse: the invisible passages between path and door."

Two entities sit in the world and they posses a certain tendency to connect. Not all two entities which sit in the world are supposed to connect but there are certain entities that recognizing such tendency in them may lead to discovery of a priori or a posterior networks. There are not shapes in the stars above. It is our recognition of supposed tendencies in between them that creates belts and pans. That is the order of a designer's brush and sculptor's thumb. 

Graphs: Coordinate points and their connecting lines. Beginning of the story.  

"From these two abstract elements, all structures in space can be reconstructed: trees and stars, junctions and bridges, rings and hubs, regions and countries_ and maps."

There is nothing till there are seen lines. 

"The space in which the modern city unfolds its structures is clearly an abstract space in which the individual constraints are of a topological order; seen from the point of view of the unfolding of these structures, the territory is simply the surface effect of its own topicality." 

Sense and sense making are layers of discovery that need tools, only for the sake of having tried excavation with the the aid of the most availably optimal tools. In other words sense is there, and sense making needs the best tools because sense making deserves clarity. 

Intersections: No emptiness really. Only networks over other networks. 

"A city, likewise, is not a flattenable graph. In a city, networks overlap upon other networks. Every traffic light, every subway transfer, and every post office, as well as all the bars and bordellos, speak for this fact." 

There are material and immaterial networks. The immaterial are waves unseen and possibly unfelt but still real in their occupation of spaces. 

  " By means of its own storage facilities (buildings, vaults, archives, monuments, tablets, books), the city became capable of transmitting a complex culture from generation to generation, for it marshaled together not only the physical means but the human agents needed to pass on and enlarge this heritage. That remains the greatest of the city's gifts." 

Data- Memory, Formatting, 

Media: Record, transmit, and process information. Gates, ports, circuits allow the transmission of information.

"Elements which are logically the most simple, and which have no memory, have been known as gates or ports. Circuits, on the other hand, whose initial and final positions are not only a function of the gates and ports, but also of the circuit's own prehistory, presuppose (no less municipal here) a built-in memory."

Technology is progressive and any progress presupposes improvements on some history. A miner will dig from where the last one left off from. The system tracks its own progress for its own advancing self sustenance. 

"Just like a computer, with a microprocessor, the memory and buses, that carry out arithmetical commands, addresses and data based on the parameters of the processor and its most recent command; the memory ultimately makes it possible to read commands or data at precise addresses or to encode them."

The space follows commands from its rooted essence. The system tracks and moves its own progress for its own advancing self sustenance. It brings the precise tools for a clear encoding of such commands specially if it has demanded power previously.

"Other media can, likewise, be transferred to the discrete universal machine. And this is reason enough to bring together the workings of the city with concepts from general information science. Reason enough, moreover, to decipher past media and the historical function of what we refer to as "man," as the play between commands, addresses, and data."  

 Data: 

> Commands

[nimamoinpour-blog]

The melancholy is not a tangible fabric, it's thick but not durable. The common sense of man has with in it a capacity to contain multi-verses. The woven strings are the matrix of surviving skin.  Thick, tattered.  Ever livening towards.  Ever softening thin.  Ever not sitting still.  Yet the moments, the parcels of not yet contained are essentially hope. The capacity to increase or the increase in capacity is the aim of a shadow hunter.  Until you go there, there will be no shadow.  The world is light.  Listening to a child beg in Starbucks.  Speaking to someone mute behind me.  The fabric of melancholy maybe thick but it is not durable.  Times change, faces thicken and thin. Tattered reality.  Hopeful shadow hunters each pursues its own. Nothing wrong with that. 

[nimamoinpour-blog]

Friday Night Out & About

Since enrolling in the Urban Planning 203 with Open University at San Jose State University, I have got appreciate San Jose from a different light. I no longer hate it just because it's not New York. 

New York has that effect. It's a stripper that says "you are the most handsome person she has ever seen." She loves you and when she disses you, that's because she loves you like you don't know. It's passive aggressive kind of love, like the kind of love your parents give you to make sure you follow their rule. It's the best! 

San Jose is not just Cupertino with all the brain-acts. It's not Campbell or Almaden either. San Jose is large and it really does have a vast culture but at its core it's a very fragmented environment.

Greater Washington reminds me of Harlem. Feels like home. It doesn't make me feel insecure. It fits my economic status, my educational beliefs in community and second chances and it has beautiful trees.

The focus on community centers remind of Tehran and the mosques. I never forget how involved I was in that scene. When I was 12 I walked up to a mosque and helped them untangle wires for 3 hours. I helped God. That was good. I got some heaven points. 

On Friday night, I decided to go back to that feeling. I drove over to the area. It was dark and not much activity. I had already eaten dinner with Mom and Dad but if I found some good burritos here I wouldn't say no. 

i walked over to the church to say a prayer but the door was locked. I looked through the crack. There was a small group there. The man was motivating a group. Another man was waving a scarf in excitement.

I didn't want to attract much attention so I walked away. I walked east towards 1st street. Right at the church I noticed something very neat. Tree branches. Tree branches and the gate. The gate would go around the branches, accommodating nature. It was neat.

Some cool cats, some dog walkers were out and about. They didn't mind me. I was walking fast. Don't know what was getting over me. Maybe the attitude of some of the white guys in the class and their "Other" attitude made me feel other. I am not quite like these folks either but I am neither here or there. I am not other. 

I slowed the pace down. Came right passed a mexican joint. 1st look. 2nd look. Sold. I went in. Eyes on me of course. Is he white? Is he mexican? Is he cop? Sat down and ordered a Modelo and chix rice place. Came out in less than 4 minutes. 

A couple next to the wall with all the pictures of Mexico, another couple at the bar. The couple at the bar though wasn't really a couple. It was a guy who had spent some time with a woman. He was talking about some prison stories. There was also another dude by the window. He was on his 4th Modelo. We were all glancing at each other and the TV. Spanish soap opera was on. More real than American TV. At least you can tell they are acting. American TV is too real quality. Scary. 

Took my time with the beer. Wanted to see what happens. The waitress was blond mexican. Smiled with her eyes. Tip generator kind of eyes but careful enough not to give too much in. The dude by the window wanted her number. She played reserved. She had other things on her mind.

Couldn't finish the beer. Couldn't finish the food. The bill came out to be $15. Regretted the decision. I had already eaten. 

Put my jacket on and walked out. Made a left heading east towards 1st. Wanted to walk it off. Walked next to the soccer field, then back towards the church. Quiet. No parties. Walked by the three trees. Found my car and drove towards Almaden Express way. I wish I took picture of the tree and the gate. 

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Using examples from vacations to colonoscopies, Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman reveals how our "experiencing selves" and our "remembering selves" perceive happiness differently. This new insight has profound implications for economics, public policy -- and our own self-awareness.

-----

To simplify, the reflective self, that which inherits the role of narrating one's life story is a. distinct and b. influences the experiencing self, that which lives the moments (3-sec intervals) of life, with a forward effecting posture.

What counted as a good vacation out of many is a question that the experiencing self follows from what the reflective self wants to remember. All of a book read, only a scene remembered. Needle out of hay stack. The hay is necessary.  To be continued is perhaps the wisest words in all of history. 

Just to be a professional marketer, the input derived from this is very clear nostalgia hunting is at the core of emotional branding. How do you find key nostalgias? Go back in time. How can this work for digital media UX? Trend recycle. What was the trend when internet was happy at the emotional core age of the user? If the user is 27 he must have encountered certain type of programing in his early happy past. Dig.

For BP it had to do with reflection of interior decorations and classic sets, found in films, photographs, discovered through nobility. For example, what did the interiors of restaurants in the 1960's and 1970's look? What places are going after the retro and future? Time, Place, Perception (Intersection of vision time & asterisk*)

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Marketing as Narcism- Marginalization as Apathy: The Generation of the How It Is Said Not What Is Said. The positive thinking society, where all is either jubilant or down right angry. The society where the white mood determines success. Where sense of humor is a job requirement. Where culture is the class ceiling. Where the biggest political correctness is about talking about football or the weather. 

I am spoiled. I admit that. But I put myself in various settings to see what it's like and Harlem and LA showed me a lot about societal intentions. A bus ride tells a lot about a city. You don't know what you will see until you take one across town. Prepare yourself to not look away, something which you are trained to do as a means of survival. The 25 bus in San Jose is a sad sad ride. These are folks that to go to De Anza College or work in Mountain View and ride their ass back to Alum Rock. Alum is the margin. The ones who ride on this bus are the marginalized. 

It's like no one cares. The recruiters judge a person's worth by how happy he sounds on the phone or what questions he gets wrong based a Freudian test. They come from sororities and frats straight to the seat of gate keeper, playing lives based on frequencies. 

I did recruiting for a little while. The whites, the young, the happy, they got the jobs just because they knew how to joke back and forth. The woman on phone told me something once that "it's hard to get up in the morning you know." I was trying to place a 51 year old woman in a manufacturing job for $11/hour. What do you mean? What does that mean that you put your head down and work? How could Larry Elision get fatter, the customer service job given to a college grad without a worry in the world just because s/he sound good on the phone? What makes you think posting your fun as a PR campaign is moral? Haven't you ever been on the margin? Do you not know go-o-d?

This says it all. I hope I can drive the message home. http://www.upworthy.com/why-the-religion-of-positive-thinking-needs-to-be-burned-at-the-stake-5?g=2

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Dialectic means two steps forward but one step back. 

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Learning a different language through listening. Antonio Banderas learns the language of his companions after night upon night of listening to their stories.

  Wisdom comes from knowing how to get a source. If knowledge has linguistic components that signify, then appropriately one ties into the other.

Connecting the dots doesn't have to be consistent. It only has to be familiar.

It is computationally so that one asks the other if reception was a success.

Language is something you can't not learn. Your body moves and sense gets made. Simplifications based on assumptions guide you through the ways.

With said communication knowledge attires.

Mediation is consistent. Connecting is inconsistent.

Language is something you cant not learn.

If knowledge has linguistic components that signify, then appropriately one ties into the other. Connecting the dots doesn't have to be consistent. It only has to be familiar.  Argument is validated. 

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Kancho or Dong Chim commonly carried out as a prank. It is performed by clasping the hands together in the shape of an imaginary gun and attempting to insert the extended index fingers sharply into an unsuspecting victim's anus, often while exclaiming "Kan-CHO!".

Although similar to a wedgie, a "goosing", or "checking oil", and "Gaddafi" in the United States, Kancho involves much more direct and intimate physical contact.

  Read more here:  http://jorkat.com/2009/04/29/dong-chim/

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You have come again.

You have now landed outside my window, sat there for a minute and left.

You called on me before with your whistles.

You came to my dreams.

What message you brought I don't want it.

I need more time.

But if you must deliver and take my response take this: "I love you. I am a bit scared, but I promise to make you proud. Thank you. Please don't hang around. Please go. Please go."

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Today I have turned 27. I used to 22 before and before that I remember I was once 8. The same question has come up: Am I still the same? Is there a me? This question was articulated to me since my frist days of philosophy lectures at UCLA: Essential vs. Accidental Properties.  The question was posed as very simple. If a thing is an aggregation of many properties, then it has to be that some of them are vital and some of them are less to the thing's essence. If you loose one you become less of yourself than if you loose the other. For the most part the argument was divided between those believed that yes there is a line between important and non-important properties that make up something and those who said their is no line. But no one ever talked about the lines themselves. No one, as far as I remember talked about the thickness of these dividing lines or what are they connected to.  You see it was a question of metaphysics, which is a question of reality, but the question was posed perhaps better amongst the epistemologists, the guys/gals who studied knowledge. It was regarding belief.  If you can imagine less of yourself if you loose your hair then the hair for that moment has afforded itself as an essential property. Now if you add up moments to make up a life, then you have the whole set. In this case, accounting for change being the only constant, you can understand properties and essence not as an always lessening entity but a fleeting entity. It always changes and everything affects it. It becomes, not less, not more, just becomes.  Since it is based on belief, it is bound by social contexts and that makes it very easy to conclude that what we become is based on what we believe. Our essence is constant as a observational agent and not as a solid agency since beliefs are swayed by context. Phenomenology is essence. Phenomenology is knowledge based. Therefore essence can not be talked about without considering intuition since the direction of obtaining a phenomenon is directly tied to beliefs and moods. So what you are shouldn't be addressed as a question of essence but a question of belief set. This is my contention at this moment, for that is what I believe now. It will change according to the bumps along the way, as it should.  

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Girls from my city. Rep them high. 

The Roof of Tehran

(Tehran, Iran)

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Revealing the truth is the maximum bravery with the promise of maximum return, if and only if, faith is withheld. 

Love based on emotion and conviction of loving based on momentary attainment will be damaging. Everybody knows that. Everybody preaches that but nobody can seem to connect the logic to the heart and vice versa specially in the hollywood generation the millenials live in.

The truth is that we can all make moves that may seem forward stepping but when making steps of love, if the person you are looking at can not be imagined as the person you will love in old age then the footage in front of you is a just a moment of fuckability not lovability.

It takes imagination to see if this person is the "soul mate." Imagination is easy. It just takes practice. Next time you find somebody attractive, imagine them in two ages please: 5 and 50. The truth ages! Do you like what you see is the shallow question. The deeper question to ask is, do you know how to handle what you see? Have you handled the 8 yr old version of this person? Have you come across the 80 yr old version? By doing this mental exercise you prepare for the id and superego version of this person.

We all know we think we are invincible in 20's. That's the ego. It's beautifully shiny. To get passed it you have to plan forward and backward.   Because if you don't use your imagination to advance and fall past, at some point in time you come to realize that s/he is just from a different species and you can't follow their messaging. This will create miscommunication. Face yourselves, you and your mate, infront of as many faces as possible see if you can conform a face together. See what the world tells you and how you hold up. Interacial couples (as most are in some way or other) who decide to wed in their 20's are doing so mostly out of rebellion and love. Not care and virtue. Be social. Go out meet people of all ages, colors and kinds. Orient yourself through disorientation. You will come to appreciate "I" and the "we" will be blessed.  One last advice: hang out with elderly and kids as much as possible. They don't bullshit. The are at truth ages. 

.... (update).... I take all this back. Be honest. The rest will, hopefully, fall into place. What was said above about imagining the past and the future is just plain fear. Be honest and the rest will fall into place. Hopefully...That means pray honestly.