He has a weblog in 4 languages!!! and you can post comments too! give it a try:

 Ahmadinejad Weblog in English

The Persian (Farsi) version has less contraversial comments. Comments are mostly from 12 year old kids who ,if real, must have heard about it from their teachers whom ,I can imagine, had orders to popularize it. The website is filled with puffery and empty comments about “Government”, “freedom” and other things. I doubt if he ever even reads the stuff.

I won’t comment on this one more. I still prefer to keep my head on those shoulders.

A few days ago, I had my first experience teaching a class of graduate students. It was a turning point in my life in the way that I thought ” this is what I enjoy to do”. I am not sure for how long I will enjoy it but, the experience was so wonderful and the feedback so strong that I felt the impact on my personality almost immediately. Teaching has always been a boring exercise to me. Before this I had taught English as a second language and many undergraduate courses, but working with graduates is a differenet, fulfilling and wonderful experience.

… So I will be a teacher!

Wikitravel writes this about Tehran:

“The traffic in Tehran is very dangerous and should be considered some of the worlds worst.”

In other places around the world, when you cross a street and a car comes towards you; the driver slows down unless he is drunk or mentally retarded or really wants to kill you. In Tehran you would really die sooner if you keep that assumption. Here, drivers will continue driving until they here a very big bang. I remember a German friend saying this about Tehran:

“Some people fall off cliffs, some people bungee jump and some people cross the streets in Tehran!”

For some reasons, I believe this behavior is more serious than a trivial ignorance rooted, for example, in culture or other vague things. For one thing you don’t see this behavior everywhere in Iran. I have traveled to almost every city in this country. Particularly, in Southern Islands in the gulf people drive very responsibly. Other cities are almost the same except for Isfahan where drivers are worse than Tehraners.

Of course Traffic is to blame. Both Tehran and Isfahan have very heavy traffic but it’s not the only reason. For one thing many other cities around the world have heavy traffic but they don’t drive like this. Then what causes this hostility? The driver perfectly knows that he will scare the pedestrian so why does he (or she) do it? I have only one answer.

This is how I see it: the driver values his own comfort and time -not pushing the brake pedal- more than the comfort of the Pedestrian. Let me take it to the extreme: He even does not care about a possible crash. The cost of crash is not that high where there is no good police and no good judiciary system. You can always pay someone off here.

That explanation does not completely cover it. It lacks the motivation! Why should a human want to hurt a human? I am very cynical and think they enjoy it.I think Humans start hurting each other for fun when there are no cheaper means of amusement.

Tehran does not have much entertainment. There are few parks (with modesty police arresting boyfriends and girlfriends), few cinemas (showing only Iranian movies) and no bars, no clubs, no amusement parks and not much else. and as I said before there is no good police and no good judiciary system, etc. So everyone goes on horsing around in the streets.

Be careful Crossing streets here.

{Note: It was hard to select a title for this post. I always find an alibi not to talk about Iran. It’s hard to stay honest on this subject and live to see the sunshine tomorrow. But the truth has a different wish of itself…}

There are four cats in the faculty of management that I know of. This one is my favorite.

She usually comes to me when I call her and is always very friendly - a very rare phenomena with cats- . I wanted to name a cat after a management guru ever since I’ve read a book about “artificial intelligence” where every example was about a cat named “Minsky” which refers to “Marvin Minsky” who is one of the founding fathers of Artificial Intelligence. It was very cool because the examples in the book would go like:

Minsky is a cat; therefore Minsky has four legs.

The logic would go like this:

If Cat(Minsky)=true Then put Legs(Minsky)=4

I don’t know about you but I find that amusing. Yes! that’s how geeky I am sometimes.

I really wanted to name it “Mintzberg” but -and accidentally not that I touched anything- found out it was not a “He”. Plus, Henry Mintzberg teaches at McGill and I’m applying to McGill and things could get very very ugly.

So, I had only two options left. Mary Parker Follett and Lillian Gilbreth. I am very fond of Follet. I have a complete set of her works in my library and actually feel some sympathy for her since she was never appreciated when she was alive. Her Ideas are 16 generations ahead of her time (now we are in generation eight.)

I decided to name her Mary Follet but for some reason she didn’t look like a Mary. I don’t know about you but I hear Mary; I go for Jesus. If Mr. Jesus hears I named a black cat the same as her mother he is going to be pissed and he is friendlier with God than I am. I even though of naming it God but it would create much confusion.

So, Say hello to “Lillian Moller Gilbert II”.

I always had this fantasy that with the development of social networks some traditional -and in my view very evil industries (e.g. Traditional media and jounalism) would go extinct. Recently I found out that day is not very far.

But first, Let me explain why I think professions like journalism are in nature immoral . The rationale for such -some may say harsh- thinking is that the public media puts too much power at the hands of few “editors” to control the attention of the society. To filter the news and with it our attention.

One might say that we all control one anothers flow of attention but it’s very different from when someone is doing it for a living. to steal from Sinclare I can say It’s hard to expect a journalist not to abuse his power by engineering readers attention when his salary depends upon abusing it. To be honest, Journalism is nothing more than delicate attention engineering. Editor ship is nothing but arranging news items in a newspaper page. I’ve worked in a news paper. It works that way.

But what do I mean by engineering attention and why is it so important to me. It is so important because one can not think about anything unless s/he pay attention to it . Or - and more importantly- if one doesn’t pay attention to something s/he will not think about it. This statement has a darker side to it and that is, if you can manage the attention of public you can make them think about what you want them to think about. I know, all Journalists are not evil but this quality is in the nature of journalism. Even I publishing this humble blog in this corner of digital world am doing it. If I am successful and you are reading this sentence then I have riveted your attention and I am taking your line of thought with me. It’s not important if you agree with me or not the matter is that you are thinking about this post. Let me make an example. Try not thinking about big pink elephant! Why I think journalism will die?

Now why do I think the death of journalism is so close? A while ago a report was published by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ). The first four paragraphs of the report speaks for itself:

http://www.journalism.org/node/7493

“If someday we have a world without journalists, or at least without editors, what would the news agenda look like? How would citizens make up a front page differently than professional news people?If a new crop of user-news sites—and measures of user activity on mainstream news sites—are any indication, the news agenda will be more diverse, more transitory, and often draw on a very different and perhaps controversial list of sources, according to a new study.

The report, released by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), compared the news agenda of the mainstream media for one week with the news agenda found on a host of user-news sites for the same period.

In a week when the mainstream press was focused on Iraq and the debate over immigration, the three leading user-news sites—Reddit, Digg and Del.icio.us—were more focused on stories like the release of Apple’s new iphone and that Nintendo had surpassed Sony in net worth, according to the study.” [more]

The study concludes that Digg (founded 2003), del.icio.us (founded 2004) and Reddit (founded 2005) focus on more trivial items of news when compared to 48 mainstream news outlets. Let me tell you what, The first news paper was published in 1594! (ref) I should say what a triumph for PEJ!

[on the side: As I was typing this I came a cross this post on Particles (R) blog. this is the poll on CNN's front page a few days ago.

I guess PEJ had a lucky week for their experiment.

[Clarification: I am not saying journalism is evil and should be for example banned. It's a beast we need to examine government records and issues of our world. It's necessary for traditional democracy. It has certain privileges. Reporters can examine secret government records. To be honest the social news websites are more focused on trivial items of news but think of a time when the 20-somethings who tag or digg in these websites become 40-something professionals. That is my Idea of Earth 2.0. Things will change. that is for sure.]

I’ve spent a substantial fruitless amount of time trying to understand why Ahmadinejad says things that he says, up until now! Recently, he said:

“In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country (USA). […] In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who’s told you that we have this.” [Yahoo][NY Times][CNN]

Many thought he said that to gloss over the fact that homosexuals are executed in Iran. Many are wrong. I know why he says things like that. Read these quotes from him before I make my argument:

• We thank God that our enemies are idiots. (6 February 2006) [Source]

• The world is rapidly getting ‘Ahmadinejadized,’ if I’m allowed to make a joke. (20 November 2006 (Source(s): [Source 1], [Source 2])

• I went to a couple of real state agencies in my neighborhood and checked. Home prices have not risen at all where I live(About 6 months ago when home prices nearly doubled in Tehran.).

And, of course, my favorite:

• “I’ve been informed of a 16 year old Iranian girl who has created nuclear energy in her home with the tools she bought off the market.” I talked to her teacher. She is now a nuclear scientist. (Link to Video on youtube)

Why do you think that happens?

I have been convinced there is only one possible way to explain it. It’s called the “Parallel Universe Theory of Ahmadinejad“. The guy lives in a totally different world. I know it’s hard to believe but this seems to be the only sound explanation and scientific method says when there is only one possible explanation to a phenomena then there is only one possible explanation.

When you imagine him living in a parallel universe, his words start making sense. He says there are no homosexuals in Iran because in the parallel-Iran there are no homosexuals. Members of his cabinet and all the people around him( what a pity Wikiquote has no page on those guys) live in the same universe. Anyway, the parallel universe that he lives in has the following attributes:

1. has no homosexuals.
2. no inflation or price increase either.
3. no homosexuals “parallel” U.S.A
4. Homosexuality is a taboo in “parallel” Earth.
5. Homosexuals are not people.

How do they switch universes is unknown. Well, if there were more quantum physicists.

[Background: As I am writing this the Iranian government news is on and it's quoting Fox news to say Ahmadinejad's Speech in Columbia university was an absolute success. I am convinced that I ,too, am living in a parallel universe. Strange one too. ]

I had to delete a couple of my last posts due to the increasing traffic of this page and ,well, crimethink.

There are a lot going on in the country. Gas stations are set in fire. Chain retail stores are being rubbed some worth of 6 million dollars. I try to forget that and search for new ways of gaming. Actually I am looking very desperately for an efficient software to manage my e-books collection yet no luck. This I found on the side. you can actually use your web cam to burst some bubbles. I am not really proud of what I’m doing here. Actually it’s very humiliating that the second largest oil reserve in the world is facing a gas shortage. what the hell, whatch some bubble bursting.

Google gives you about six million of games like this so I guess it’s been going on for a while. The concept is very innovative and makes me think that something like minority report isn’t really that far off. What’s the use though in Iran. A government can, very effectively, make a rich country poor.

P.S. I’ll update you guys on my life and who I am and all the other things so stay tuned. I don’t monitor web site traffic so I’ll Assume there are a lot of you guys. even millions. it’s good to be optimistic.

There is something fundamentally wrong with academic education. I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s there. Some thing doesn’t feel right with all of these classes and home works and exams. Maybe I should change that to “There is some thing really really wrong with business schools.”. Yeah, that makes more sense and it makes painful amounts of sense in a flawed and troubled society like Iran. Let me explain.
The business is changing everyday. Professors on the other hand do not! and that’s why in developed economies business school courses are (hopefully) taught by business man or management consultants who may or may not hold a PhD. It was like this in the 1950s when business schools were first established and academic persons tried ,although fruitlessly, to raise business men.
In Iran the situation is even more caricaturized. In our school for example (University of Tehran School of Entrepreneurship) Professors are half business men and half academic. The first group suffers the problem their American counterparts had fifty years ago. the business men (Consultant type) professors have another problem peculiar to Iran. The Iranian business environment does not corroborate with what they have to teach. The maturity of organizations are at extremely low levels here and they have to teach contemporary business text books ( even the old ones don’t teach much on birbary which is a very common thing if you want to engage in a business relationship with the government. So, In short, What you learn is of really no busines value inside Iran. That’s not the whole story. What you learn does not come handy anywhere else in the world (the developed world) since you where not familiarized with the world business environment.
That was why a business degree issued from an Iranian university is actually useless. of course this was only my Idea and might be very very wrong. what do you think? I think this was a really boring post… very very boring.