Imperialist Geography

Posted on September 13, 2012 by ofurhe

People ask me what it means to be a geographer. Most people think of memorizing state capitals. I tell them I make and study maps, I also tell them about Tobler’s law : everything is related, closer things are more related than distant things. For my thesis, I wrote about Afghanistan, a country whose fate is determined by its physical and cultural geography.

Saying your’e a geographer or a cartographer makes you sound like a British Orientalist from the 19th century, but until American stops behaving like 19th century Britain in its foreign policy we’ll still need cartographers:

Apple Maps – Old News

Posted on September 13, 2012 by ofurhe

*I’ve decided to change my blogpost day to Monday and shorten the posts while I’m in school.

It’s been a few months since Apple announced it would they would create their own map app, no longer relying on google maps. I’ve linked to a few articles below. I read somewhere (I can’t remember where) that apple has hired real cartographers to run their maps department while google hired computer programmers. I’m curious to see how this turns out.

With the advent of GoogleMaps everyone became an amateur cartographer. But in order to make maps that display more specific information you need to be able to use a program like ArcGIS and you need some rudimentary knowledge of programming. Is this a problem? In my Human Computer Interaction (HCI) class we’re learning that it is never the User’s fault if they can’t get something to work. Is it okay for some fields to require specialist knowledge? Why/Why not?

On a personal level I’m trying to figure out if it’s worth it to learn enough about computers and programming to write my own programs or whether I just need to learn how to use the crappy existing ones well enough for my needs.

Albért the turtle

Posted on August 25, 2012 by ofurhe

I keep meaning to introduce you to Albért, my turtle. I got Albért last summer at some point, and named him after Alber Elbaz of Lanvin. Don’t you think they look alike?:

From thegloss.com

Anyway, we’re moving this weekend. He’s lived in this bathtub for a year, among the Dr. Bronners.

What a house; my, she was yar. But it’s onward and upward from here.

Discrete Math Concepts

Posted on August 16, 2012 by ofurhe

I’m taking a test tomorrow, so I’m going to use this post to help me study. So this post isn’t so much what I have been thinking about all week (I’ve been out of town for a wedding), it’s what I should have been thinking about this week. It’s also an experiment in talking about math and technology using words (If you find math boring, feel free to read someone else’s blog). I’m taking a class called Discrete Math, most people don’t know what this is (I didn’t either, before I took the class). Discrete Math is a requirement for most Computer Science students, it’s a jumble of math concepts that apply to computers including Logic, Algorithms, Set-Theory, Graph Theory, Combinatorics and Number Theory (here’s a video intro if you’re curious). It’s not discreet meaning hidden or restrained, it’s discrete; meaning distinct and separate. Discrete math deals with numbers that you can count, as opposed to Calculus which deals with infinity and continuity. It’s my understanding that computer’s can’t deal with infinity, they will just count and count until they run out of memory or power. They can count pretty high, but they’ll never get to infinity.

I’m almost done with the course so I can share some of the things I’ve learned and how (I think) they apply to Comp Sci. First we went over some basic logic, we thought about how to convert English sentences and arguments into logical symbols, how to test the validity of an argument and also how to use truth tables. How to convert spoken language into symbols is helpful, but to me the clearest application of logic to computer science is the use of truth tables. Truth tables are manipulations of true (T) and false (F) values, if you substitute 1 and 0 for T and F, you have classic binary values that computers can read. A bit is a boolean string of length 1, it just tells you whether something is true or false, on or off, black or white.

Next we studied basic sets, and equivalence relations. Sets are essentially primitive databases, in fact, a csv file, that you can open in excel, is just a set of numbers or strings (csv stands for comma separated values). Proofs and relations help us to define exactly what is in a set and how sets relate to each other. These laws determine how to manipulate data; a lot of it has to do with what things we consider to be equivalent. It’s really important for computers to know whether something is the same or not. Things that are the same can be grouped with other equivalent things, they related to themselves (reflexive) and others in a certain way (symmetric and transitive). Equivalences set the parameters for a computer’s sense of discretion, it helps computers to discern and judge like things from unlike things. To me, this is what makes computers ‘smart’, the fact that they can distinguish one kind from another (maybe someday they’ll be able to tell good from bad, right from wrong).

In the second unit we looked at sequences, sums, induction, algorithms, and number theory. Here we took a basic look at the different ways to tell computers what to do, and how effective they are. For a set you can input each entry separately, or you can populate an entire dataset by defining a function, and saying everything in that sequence is in the set. There are two main ways of defining sequences, you can define the first term and have a rule from there (recursive), or you can define it abstractly (closed set). Mathematical induction is a type of proof that uses the same idea as a recursive set; it says if you can prove the first idea and then say that the second idea is implied by the first idea everything else falls into place. I understand this in theory, but I had a lot of trouble with this in practice, it tends to use a lot of algebra I haven’t used in a while.

Next we looked at algorithms. My teacher says ‘Algorithms are a recipe to solve a problem,’ an algorithm is a series of steps which when followed will solve a certain type of problem. For example we looked at the Euclidean Algorithm to solve Greatest Common Factor problems. To apply the concept of algorithms to my programming class an algorithm is like pseudocode. One way to write a program is to start with pseudocode, it’s like a very detailed outline. You write out a line of code saying, for example, “if a < b, switch b and a". The code in JAVA would look something like if (a < b) { a=b; b=a;} In another programming language it would look different, but the algorithm or pseudocode could be the same. In number theory we looked at how integers interact with each other, the Rules of Arithmetic (addition and multiplication are closed, commutative, associative, have identity, inverse and multiplication distributes; there is an ordering relation and a divides relation). Using these rules we are able to find primes and come up with a division algorithm. These types of rules would be very helpful if you were trying to build a calculator, and what is a computer but a giant calculator?. My test is on the second unit so I'll have to go over some induction examples, and also memorize the formulas for recursive sequences and the rules of arithmetic. p.s. As if it didn't take me long enough to learn how to spell rhythm, now I have to learn algorithm?

The Extent of the Rights of Man

Posted on August 2, 2012 by ofurhe

I got into a really dumb internet comment argument this morning and it made me think of freedom of speech and the rights of man. America was founded on the idea of the ‘pursuit of happiness,’ but what about the situations where your happiness can affect someone else’s? To what extend are we allowed to pursue our own happiness to someone else’s detriment?

I was talking about this to a friend of mine who is a philosopher, he said this conundrum can be solved easily, just insert the caveat that ‘as long as it’s not hurting anyone else.’ In our overpopulated world, though, I don’t think it’s quite so simple. As someone for whom sleep is very important, I always think of loud music as an example, at what point is it a nuisance? Loud music makes the listener happy, a good nights’ sleep makes the sleeper happy. Who gets to pursue happiness? The original listener or the one trying to sleep?

What if you’re an artist and your art is painful to other peoples’ ears? Can you say words that are mean? How mean can they be? Can you say racist things if they are true? What if you’re a racist and you don’t know it? What if your happiness comes from a sexual fetish that involves consent? or children? What if your traditional food is prepared in a very smelly way (looking at you, KimChee)? What if what one person thinks is a compliment, you take as an insult?

These are things that you can do to be happy, what about things you’re not even conscious of doing? What if you smell bad? What if your body is so deformed (or attractive) it makes people uncomfortable or distressed? What if your speaking voice is so loud it hurts (sensitive) people? Where is the line between discomfort and pain?

In a way, this is minutia, but I also think it’s extremely important. These issues come up all the time, and they will come up more and more as the world’s population increases. I’m sure the founding fathers didn’t really have to deal with their neighbors loud music, they could just pitch their tent in the empty space a mile away. We don’t have that much empty space anymore. In fact, I can’t really think of a situation where you can pursue happiness without affecting other people in the process.

I realize it’s a privilege that I get to write about these things and I want to take a moment to appreciate that I have these freedoms and I have the right to talk about them, and question them. Not everyone has these rights, as intimated in the recent Ai WeiWei documentary (haven’t seen it, just heard them talk about it on the gabfest)

Feel free to comment if you have any answers, these are just questions.

Power Dynamics

Posted on June 29, 2012 by ofurhe

This week I started taking some programming and math classes as pre-requisites for my Comp. Sci. Degree and, as I suspected, they’re really difficult. Why am I working so hard (and spending so much money) to get a degree in Computer Science anyway? Well there are a few reasons:

–I need a marketable skill in order to compete in this job market. The job market for recent college grads in the US is DIRE. I was really lucky to find a job when I first graduated from college, finding another one has been truly challenging. I was unemployed then underemployed then unemployed again, accruing debt the whole time. With this degree at least I’ll be accruing debt with a purpose. Even if I can’t get a job that is different from one I’ve had before, I’ll probably be able to automate it somehow. Do it faster and more efficiently with the help of computers.

–I think women and minorities are underrepresented in technology which affects the products we have the world we live in. Women and minorities have always been underrepresented in technology, what’s most worrisome to me now, is that our numbers are actually going down. There are half as many women in tech now than there were in the 80s. I don’t know how technology would be different if it were designed by women, but if I don’t participate in it, I never will.

–I’m really uncomfortable with not knowing how computers work. More and more, we spend most our time on computers and dealing with technology. If knowledge is power, I am not comfortable giving that power and control to someone (or something) else. It’s MY computer, it should do what I tell it to. It’s not a person, it doesn’t have free will, if it isn’t doing what I tell it to it’s because I’m not saying it correctly. Computers have astounding potential, but if I’m not using it, what the point?

–I need the knowledge to work on the (geography) problems I care about. In high school I fell in love with Calculus, in particular, I remember spending hours working on one problem, how best to display a sphere (3D) on a page (2D), a problem of map projection. I was (and am) convinced that there is a way to minimize distortion with the magic of calculus. Taking more math classes now I am getting excited about different problems that I can use computers to solve. Problems with access to information (geography/IT/translation), women’s issues, 1st world problems, 3rd world problems etc. Computers can help.

These (compelling) reasons aside, I’m not a computer scientist and I’m not really interested in becoming a programmer (unless I can make a lot of money doing it, which is possible). Partly I’m using computer science to help me figure out what I really want to do with my life. It’s hard going through all these math and programming classes, and to be honest, I might not last. But I think every minute is worth it, each class is one more computer skill that most people don’t have, a leg up on the competition. Plus, the harder it is to accomplish something, the more pride I feel when it’s done. With math and computer science it’s more than pride, there’s a power in mastery, when you can take a tool that almost everyone uses in a general way to do something specific and helpful to you, you make it your own.

“Between the ages of 20 and 40 we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the difference between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.”

-W. H. Auden via Gretchen Rubin

Afghanistan War

Posted on June 21, 2012 by ofurhe

When people ask me why I’m interested in going to Afghanistan, I always have a hard time answering because my gut response is ‘Why aren’t YOU?’ On September 11th I was at boarding school in Putney, Vermont and I remember reading this Boondocks comic that seemed to express what I was thinking.

My reaction to September 11th was an introspective one, I asked myself ‘Why do people hate us so much?’ and ‘Why didn’t we know before?’, ‘What have we done?’ and ‘What can we do to make sure these people don’t attack us anymore?’

A few years after the attacks I was a Junior in high school and I had the opportunity to meet a group of women judges from Kabul. Just learning that there were women who had been judges in Afghanistan complicated my view of Afghanistan. Actually meeting and spending time with them made me more and more curious about the people there and what they were doing. If there were women there going to work every day there must have been at least two buildings standing, their homes, and their workplaces; all I saw on TV was burning rubble. I became really interested in the people and the culture, what was sharia law? What was really the situation there? (Here’s a great video/interview I just found about everyday life in Afghanistan if you’re as curious as I was.)

I studied Afghanistan in college as a Near Eastern Studies major at the University of Chicago. I learned Persian and Pashto. I decided to double major in Geography because I kept finding that the problems in Afghanistan had to do with ethnicities isolated by geography. The colonialist boundaries had put two very different ethnic tribes together in one country (along with many other tribes and ethnicities, Afghanistan is extremely diverse, many people thought I was an Iranian-African from the Bandar-Abbas region). I wrote my thesis on how the legal systems in Afghanistan were distributed geographically.

As you know, a few months ago I went to Kabul. In Kabul I heard 3 things with surprising consistency, the biggest problem or challenge in the country was lack of security, everyone thought the Pakistani government was to blame for many of the country’s problems (that the US should stop funding Pakistan) and everyone we asked wanted to keep US or international involvement in some respect. We talked mostly to middle-class urbanites in Kabul, but this was the anecdotal evidence we were able to gather. You can see the evidence of 30 years of war in and around Kabul, in every neighborhood our tour guide pointed out a building that had a suicide bomb attack, the palace and museum were destroyed, we went through check-points almost every day. But I can’t imagine what it’s like in the countryside.

We did have a couple different points of view to complicate this. One was on the second day at a refugee camp, which I talked about in an earlier post. The other was in the village of Istalif at a small traditional restaurant. We were served a dish called chainaki (lamb stew served in ‘china’ – tea kettles) as we sat on the rugs. A few different men came in and out of the restaurant and we were able to chat with them informally, one of the few times we weren’t on a scheduled meeting.

First we talked to the older man who we called Kaka meaning uncle, a term of respect and endearment. He talked about life in his village over the years. He and his family did pottery and leatherwork before the revolution, and the bazaars were much bigger. He lost his business after the revolution and the village of Istalif lost 75% of their population. Most of the money from Istalif went to Kabul, but there were a few families who came back and are doing agriculture again (wheat, fruit, figs, apricots, apples and cherries).

There was also a young man who was up for the weekend, he runs a camera shop in Kabul. We talked to him and his friend for a bit. He said some Afghans thought the Qur’an burning was done by Brits and not the US. He talked to us a little about what Islam meant to him, and how if everyone followed the Good Book we would have no problems. They brought up some issues about Afghans who can’t get Visas to the US. They said if the US is really an ally they should let Afghans travel to the US on business. If we stay in the country, we stay as an ally, but he warned, if we stay and try to start a war that history will teach us what happens to people who try to take over Afghanistan. Persians, Indians, British, Russians, no one has ever held Afghanistan.

The more research I did about Afghanistan the more confused I was about US involvement. I wrote a thesis, studied the geography, learned the culture and even went to Afghanistan. If I had to characterize the Afghan people, based on my experience, I would say they are generous, resilient and hugely diverse. I essentially came to the conclusion that I can’t figure out why Afghans bombed us because Afghans didn’t bomb us, some crazy terrorists did, they happened to live in Afghanistan (well, Pakistan). I recently heard this statistic about how Islamic people are more likely to be the victims of terrorist attacks than the perpetrators. Fear cannot be the driving force in this debate, we must come from a place of diplomacy and compassion, not imperialistic hubris. But I still can’t tell whether it’s right to stay in the country, helping people as well as killing people, or to leave, abandoning them altogether.

Talkin’ Bout my Generalizations

Posted on June 20, 2012 by ofurhe

My mom and her husband keep talking about generalizations. When is it okay to generalize? Is it okay to make generalizations about people who come from a certain area (jingoism), wear certain clothes (classism usually) or have a certain shade of skin (racism)? What about people born on a certain day (astrology) or people of a certain personality type (enneagram, type a-b, love type etc.)? Can something be racist and also true? Do we learn more when we make generalizations or when we don’t?

I took an academic writing class where they talked about how there are only two academic theses: the first type says that things are simpler than they look, to generalize and say that everything fits into easy boxes, the second type of thesis says that things are more complex than they look and a previous author was missing some crucial piece of information when they made their generalization. My thesis was sort of the 1st type, in retrospect I think it should have been the 2nd. As humans I think we make generalizations on our own, generalizations are easy; what’s hard is dealing with a more complicated situation.

I think it’s important as a friend to keep others from oversimplifying [our friend], to continue to complicate how they’re perceived by others. It’s our job as friends to pay attention to detail, because we remember details of the things we care about, and by definition we care about our friends. I regret the times I told simplistic narratives for a complex friend. I felt hurt when my friends oversimplified me. You know the expression K.I.S.S.- Keep it simple, stupid? I say keep it complex, yes, convoluted ideas are hard to follow, and it takes a huge amount of skill to edit them down to their essence, but simple if simple is hard, complex is harder. Complexity makes us grow.

International Women’s Day – Day 8

Posted on June 14, 2012 by ofurhe

The theme of my trip to Afghanistan, 3 months ago now, was the celebration of International Women’s day but we almost didn’t get to go. For days we had been hearing about the fair-like atmosphere of the celebration, women selling goods, speeches (Karzai made a surprise visit the year before), and every day we went to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs for our official invitations. 2 days before the celebration we waited in the car while our tour guide went into the ministry, he came out saying ‘I have good news and bad news: the good news is I finally have your official invitations, the bad news is that the festivities have been postponed until the day after you leave because of the Kabul city-wide furlough days.’ I was speechless, I had spent so much time around men, in their space, I wanted to finally be in the women’s sphere. I had been so looking forward to this day, this was what the whole trip was about. I was beyond disappointed

We came up with an alternative plan. We had been discussing taking day trips to other provinces and cities and one of the ideas was to go to the Panjshir Valley to see Massoud’s tomb and the countryside. On the way we would go through Parwan province and see if they had an any Women’s Day celebrations since they weren’t subject to the Kabul city furlough. We found out that they had a celebration in a hotel in Charikar, the capital of Parwan province. After being thoroughly patted down we made our way upstairs and were seated in the front row of the celebration, next to the Governor and other dignitaries. We stood out, as always, this time because we had men with us in the womens’ section. The format was to be similar to Kabul’s celebration, speeches, skits and songs, formal gift-giving, followed by a women’s bazaar.

I took some terrible footage, here is a clip from the invocation:

After that we heard from the Governor, who told us many stories, including ones from the Qur’an about the role of women in society. Then a speech from the Minister of Women’s affairs, a children’s choir, a women judge spoke with passion, a skit about domestic abuse, and women of the police force were awarded plaques and gifts. They asked us to buy things at the women’s bazaar before we left, so we bought some cakes which we gave to a poor child on our way out That afternoon we went to the Panjshir Valley.

Articles in my Digital Age

Posted on June 7, 2012 by ofurhe

This morning I got a chance to do one of my favorite things, browse at a bookstore and buy some new magazines. Ever since I got into the masters in computer science program it’s hard not to think of everything I do and how I could experience it digitally. For me, the experience of a magazine consists of 3 parts; finding, reading, and processing.

The first part is finding the magazine or article. In this case I judged completely based on covers, I bought Under the Radar because Yeasayer (my favorite band of the past 5 years or so) was on the cover, the cover also mentioned an interview with the beloved Aubrey Plaza. I also bought Good Magazine because it is their Migration issue, and I am interested in contemporary Geography, I love Good mag (I used to subscribe), and I hadn’t read it in a while. I also read that they recently let go of their editorial staff and I suspect the magazine might be really crappy for a while.

We live in the digital age, so I know that some of this content is available online but how would I go about finding it? Most people enter the internet through google; I googled Yeasayer and got some articles from the usual suspects, SPIN and pitchfork, announcing their new album and tour dates. Google-ing geography and migration is similarly useless. None of these things would have led me to these interesting articles. I read most of my news and content from my googlereader feed, which does give some suggestions based on what I’ve read and the things that I have liked. But it didn’t suggest these articles and I’m not sure how it could have.

In terms of reading, the experience on paper, on computer and iPad I find remarkably similar in most respects. I do find it convenient to be able to look up words, concepts and references. If I’m reading an article on paper I like to have my ipod touch nearby for references, otherwise I won’t look them up (and I won’t get smarter). If I’m reading on a computer it’s easier to look things up, but it’s also easier to get distracted and stop reading the article.

For me, the most exciting articles I read are able to identify sociological trends before I do. I see myself in them, and I see myself as a part of a whole; a great articles helps me feel unique, but also points out the overarching themes of our time. Once I’ve finished the article, what do I do about it?

I might like the article enough to share it with someone, with the paper article I can mention it to someone and tell them to buy it, I can let them borrow it, or I can tell them about it*. The easiest way to do this is to find the article online and email the link to someone or share it on facebook or twitter. I might want to clip out the images from the article and put them on my wall (pinterest is a digital version of this process). As Nick Hornby says “It’s what you like not what you are like.” Interest magazines are one way of creating a community of like-minded people. As magazines fade, sharing things with people helps us to create online communities based on mutual interest rather than physical proximity. This is one of the questions I want to explore in computer science, as globalization increases, and the physical borders between countries begin to wear away, the virtual connections between cultures become more and more important. How do we model these connections? How do we maintain our traditions, our individuality, but also share new ideas and maintain respect and diversity? How is our experience of culture changing?

*I was reminded, recently of a story I heard about the Gettysburg Address. Since the speech was made before voice recording devices, and no one had a pen and paper handy, we know the words from Lincoln’s own notes and from what people wrote down after they got home. It is impressive that 3 different people were able to write down such a long speech and there were few discrepancies, but it makes me wonder about how we process and record information these days. We don’t teach people to remember things in that way anymore, nor do I think we should. But how do we cut through the noise? How do we know if someone’s voice is important when everyone is being recorded?

Ofurhe Igbinedion

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