updated sporadically at best

Run Your Research in Racket

2012-01-30T15:08:00.000-08:00

One of the most fun talks at the Principles of Programming Languages (POPL) conference this year was about Redex, a Racket-based system for lightweight mechanization of programming language semantics. This system allows people to encode their language semantics and theorems in the Racket programming language (the new face of Scheme). The programmer can then play with example programs evaluated using these semantics and use random testing to validate their theorems. This is a much lighter-weight alternative for getting formalisms right than using interactive proof assistants such as Coq. You may read more on the project website.

Resolutions for 2012

2012-01-01T08:06:00.000-08:00

In Influence, Robert Cialdini writes that people should exploit their own sense of consistency and publicly announce goals they are trying to achieve. Here are my New Year's resolutions.

Be nicer. Making other people happy is not only nice, but it also gets you out of your head and makes you happier. I would like to give more genuine compliments, take more time to listen to people, and take more time to help people. Concrete goal: Do at least one thing for someone else each day.
Be funnier. I think I am hilarious; the world does not always seem to understand. Everyone would benefit if I improved how I convey my sense of humor. I purchased a Groupon for classes at the Improv Asylum; I also plan to pay more attention to what other people find funny. Concrete goal: Each week, make at least one person I do not know that well laugh.
Keep my spaces neater. Part of growing up involves having more discipline about how I present myself. Part of this presentation involves my living and work spaces. I have previously been of the view that having a cluttered desk is a sign of productivity, but I hypothesize that having a clear desk will help clear my mind. Concrete goal: Clear the clutter in my office and apartment by Sunday evening each week.
Get enough sleep. I am a happier, healthier, and more productive (and thus nicer, funnier) person when I have slept sufficiently. Concrete goal: Average 7.5 hours of sleep per night in 2012.
Keep up better with current events. What counts as "current events" in my life has devolved to what people post in my Facebook feed. I would like to take some time to optimize my process for engaging with relevant news, blogs, friend updates, and Twitter updates. (I recently discovered Google Currents, which I like quite a bit.) Concrete goal: Read one article about an event in the world each day.

I welcome you to call me out if you catch me slipping.

A Taste of Peru

2011-12-30T17:45:00.000-08:00

I just returned from a week in Peru with my extended family. (Photos here.) The Andean scenery is incredible, the blend of Incan and Spanish history is fascinating (short summary: the Spanish stuck crosses on top of everything), and its mixed-race population has a beautiful, distinctive look. Wireless internet is surprisingly ubiquitous--a phenomenon perhaps explained by tourism being Peru's most rapidly growing industry (see Wikipedia).

It is important to show up to Peru with an appetite: food is central to Peruvian culture. Peruvian cuisine seems similar to, if a bit lighter than, Mexican cuisine. Peru's main crop is corn: they have a large-kernel corn that was quite novel and delicious. Tomatoes and cereals such as quinoa feature prominently in Peruvian cuisine. Peru is also known for its ceviche, which is raw fish marinated in lime. Dishes I have never seen elsewhere include alpaca meat and guinea pig meat. Peruvians also have great desserts, including a tres leches cake, rice pudding, and a purple corn pudding.

We spent three days in the highland city of Cuzco, former Incan cultural center and a major Peruvian tourist destination. We saw the archaeological ruins of Saqsayhuaman, a stone fortress complex that provides an incredible view of the city. We took a day trip (3.5 hours each way by train, as an alternative to the four-day Inca Trail hike) to Machu Picchu, the 15th century Incan city in the clouds never conquered by the Spanish and famously "discovered" by Yale professor Hiram Bingham in 1911. (See photo.) Back in Cuzco, we toured the Cathedral of San Domingo, which was formerly an Inca temple: the combination of the Inca stonework foundation and the 16th-century Spanish religious oil paintings was fascinating. Finally, we made a trip to the Sacred Valley, where we visited the market in the town of Pisaq and toured the archaeological ruins of Ollantaytambo, which had a valley village surrounded by stone-lined terraces and stone structures in the surrounding Andean slopes. Ollantaytambo was my favorite site because of its breathtaking scale: the hills surrounding the village are completely covered with beautiful stone structures (and they rolled the stones up the mountains themselves!). (See photo.) Travel tip for those visiting the Cuzco area: bring a warm jacket and drink lots of water to combat the effects of high altitude.

During our day in Lima, our expert half-Chinese, half-Peruvian tour guide Tino showed us the Incan remnants and Chinese restaurants in the district of Miraflores. (Lima has many Chinese immigrants and, according to Tino, over 3,000 Chinese restaurants. Peruvians even have a term chifa--based on the Chinese 酒饭, "food and drink"--that refers to Chinese Peruvian cuisine.) Lima is a modern city that reminds me of Los Angeles with its smog and abundant palm trees and of Brussels with its large neoclassical urban monuments and wide roads. The two most prominent themes of tour were the Pacific Ocean (see photo of the view from dinner) and the Catholic cross (see photo of Pizarro's initial cross). We visited El Parque del Amor, Lima's main square, a random gastronomical museum, and the beautiful Monastery of San Francisco, which has incredible 17th century Sevillan tiles and incredibly creepy catacombs (with human remains sorted by bone!) below. I would love to spend more time in Lima seeing more of the architecture and getting to know its fusion of Incan and Spanish cultures.

For those of you considering such a vacation, the actual travel to Peru is not so bad. It is about a 9-hour flight to and from Los Angeles. We flew red-eye both ways; nine hours is actually an ideal length of time for a red-eye because you can comfortably fit in two meals and a semi-decent night's sleep.

As we were traveling in a large group (with many teenagers) for a short time, our trip consisted of going from site to site via various modes of transportation. I would love to return to Peru to spend more time engaging with the culture and terrain (for instance, eating at local restaurants and hiking the Inca Trail). And with a better camera!

Reasons to Pursue a Ph.D.

2011-12-29T18:23:00.000-08:00

Several months ago, I spoke with a former schoolmate who is considering whether to leave Google to pursue a Ph.D. Since I like to believe I make good decisions, I immediately gave a rundown of the pros. As a responsible advice-giver, I initiated the same conversation between the schoolmate and a Ph.D. graduate whom I know to be actively against recommending graduate school. Surprised I could agree with so many of the cons, I reevaluated my stance and again convinced myself that graduate school is worthwhile. I discuss the reasons in this post.

There are many reasons not to go to graduate school. If you are in computer science, your income will be about a quarter of your market value. (There will also be no onsite massages or free dry cleaning.) You will probably be working on problems that are difficult to explain to your friends and family. You may not see positive results for months, even years. Even if you get results, your work may not have impact on the greater society for years—maybe never. Nobody will understand you or your work, including your fellow graduate students, who will often be unhappy. After you graduate, you will find that you did not need a Ph.D. for what you end up doing. And then you will cry.

Less hedonistic people will tell you to endure this suffering for longer-term goals: that faculty position, that job in science policy. As someone who believes in short-term pleasure, I have other reasons for recommending a Ph.D. While I would not mind becoming a rock-star professor, I am in graduate school for the freedom and for the opportunities. Graduate school is an all-you-can eat buffet for ideas and self-development. Rather than serving as a mercenary in implementing someone else's vision, I am paying (with opportunity cost and time) for the chance to solve open-ended problems of my choosing. In realizing the solutions, I can choose which skills to focus on developing: for instance, delivering a talk. In exploring questions, I have access to the experts in their fields. I can even call random companies to ask questions about their operations. (I have done this.) I also have access to almost every course at my university, as well as the library collection and academic journal subscriptions. As long as I can demonstrate progress on a potentially interesting problem, nobody complains. Even if I do not use my Ph.D. in my future career, it will have been a fun (and productive) few years.

The freedom and opportunities of graduate school also extend to lifestyle. Graduate school is conducive to a fabulous lifestyle—and I mean this seriously. Since entering graduate school I have become an avid yogi, explored aerial acrobatics, and co-founded Graduate Women at MIT, which now has over 800 mailing list members, two annual conferences, and a mentoring program. Since entering graduate school, I have traveled—for work and for pleasure—to Ireland, Canada, Germany, Serbia, Romania, Hungary, Austria, China, Belgium, Peru, and various US locations. I have a fantastic social network of fellow graduate students, many of whom have similarly rich life interests. (My officemate does bike racing; several friends do outdoors activities almost every weekend; another friend has had his own company for several years.) I am also in a book club called Whiskey and Words: we discuss literature over scotch. The flexibility and community of grad school have facilitated the exploration of my personal interests.

Before you get too envious, I should admit that graduate school is not always a party. With the freedom to choose what you work on comes with the possibility that what you work on may not be interesting valuable to anyone else. My first paper with my advisor was rejected five times over the course of two years before it was accepted to a major conference. I have spent months working on ideas and implementations that I will not ultimately show to the world. For the majority of my time in grad school, I have worked alone with my advisor or internship mentors. Fear not that I am some sort of happy freak: I have done my time in states of questioning, despair, and isolation. The struggle, however, has been part of the learning process: of developing my taste in research problems and of learning how to realize a high-level vision. It helps that I have a high risk tolerance and do not take myself that seriously—and that I have a sun lamp to augment the short days of Cambridge winter (made shorter by occasional deadline-driven visits to Samoan time*).

A caveat is that various logistical advantages have contributed to my positive experience. For my first three years, I was supported by a fellowship that gave me some flexibility and bargaining power. I have an advisor who works closely with me, believes in the work, and gives me a fair amount of freedom. (It also helps that he is an assistant professor who is, arguably, on a more demanding clock than I am.) I have also done a couple of internships at Microsoft Research that have helped me both establish additional credibility in my field and finance a more luxurious lifestyle. Not everyone has the advisor and/or funding situation that yields such freedom: it is important to ask the right questions to know what to expect.

If you like the freedom to work on open-ended questions, then graduate school may be a good fit. Pursuing a Ph.D. provides amazing opportunities not just to make an impact in your field, but also to develop life skills and to indulge in personal exploration. While there are tradeoffs (financial, time, and other), pursuing a Ph.D. is an experience I recommend**.

* Computer science conferences seem to have decided midnight Samoan time is the most fair time for paper submission cut-off.
** This is only based on the first 3.5 years of my Ph.D. We will see how I feel in a couple of years.

Ramping up the Graduate Women at MIT blog

2011-11-09T21:51:00.000-08:00

Graduate Women at MIT now has a new blogging initiative. If you have been following my blog to hear about gender/women in science issues, please follow the GWAMIT blog as well!

Lessons from Startup Bootcamp

2011-09-29T11:21:00.000-07:00

I recently attended Startup Bootcamp, a one-day free workshop that brings in startup founders to talk about lessons learned. Here are some brief notes about what I learned from each speaker:

Paul English, Kayak. The team is most important: assemble the best possible team and advisors.
Leah Culver, Convore. Show up and do something. It might be hard work.
Andrew Sutherland, Quizlet. Dogfood your product.
Naveen Selvadurai, Foursquare. Build around an atomic action.
Charlie Cheever, Quora. Looking at qualitative data is important.
Drew Houston, Dropbox. Surround yourself with people you want to be like.
Alex Polvi, Cloudkick. Take care of your team.
Anthony Volodkin, Hype Machine. Just fucking do something.
Nathan Blecharczyk, Airbnb. Work hard, be creative, and keep pushing forward.
Patrick Collison, Stripe. Starting a company is a great way to apply academic ideas.

The 3000-attendee registration and the number of business people looking for tech cofounders confirmed that we are indeed in a bubble.

Caramelized Leek Soup

2011-09-14T13:56:00.000-07:00

A great dish to try as you brace for colder weather is caramelized leek soup, which requires about an hour of preparation in a heavy kettle. I tried it with ciabatta bread (for dipping) and broiled chicken with roasted green beans for the main course.

Moving in Cambridge

2011-08-30T12:13:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, I moved in time to bunker down for Hurricane Irene (which proved to be little more than a windy storm for Cambridge, MA). As most of my previous moves have involved primarily storage/shipping, I'm a little late to the game when it comes to knowing how moving works. During my move I learned the following:

Do not move on September 1 if you can help it. I haven't ever done this myself, but our move was initially scheduled for September 1 and it was difficult even to reserve a UHaul--and this was at the beginning of August. If you have to move September 1, plan early.
If you can't get a UHaul, try the suburbs. We initially had non-overlapping apartment leases (Aug. 31/Sept. 1) and needed to reserve a truck overnight to store our things. We ended up finding one about an hour outside Cambridge.
Cambridge issues moving van permits. You can apply for one here but they will cost you money and it may not be honored. I paid $45 for two spots and even though the city put up signs, cars occupied the spots for the duration of my move.
Wardrobe boxes are brilliant. Wardrobe boxes (available at the UHaul store and other places) allow you to hang your clothing intact onto a built-in bar. They take up a lot of space, though.
Becoming a minimalist is a good idea. I don't think of myself as someone who likes having a lot of stuff, but apparently I have too many things to move comfortably. I have been making good use of the MIT reuse list, the Planet Aid clothes/shoes donation box at MIT, and the book/item exchanges in my building for giving things away.

From my roommate I also learned some cool things about the car-sharing company Zipcar:

MIT has a great Zipcar deal where students pay $25 a year.
If your Zipcard does not work, Zipcar can remotely open the trunk of a Zipcar, where backup cards are waiting. They will be able to remotely activate a new card for you.

I am currently looking forward to the September 1 looting, which occurs when everybody moving out realizes they have too much stuff and begins selling/giving away things. Being a minimalist may limit my options somewhat.

Google Sites: Why I Believe in WYSIWYG Again

2011-08-20T11:44:00.000-07:00

If you have been looking for a mindlessly easy way to create and host slick-looking websites, your life is about to get a heck of a lot better.

I recently discovered that Google Sites provides an amazingly usable interface for creating websites without programming. Sites I've created using Google Sites include a site for Graduate Women at MIT (screen shot to the left) and a personal wiki for posting links to useful things. In this post, I describe what you can use Google Sites for, what you can't use Google Sites for, and how to get started using Google sites.

Google Sites is really done well--not only does it provide support for a comprehensive set of website creation actions, but it also gets the little things right. It has the following advantages:

Easy creation of websites, wikis, blogs, etc. You can edit web pages the way you edit Google Docs. Google Sites has four built-in templates: a regular website (editable almost exactly like a Google Doc), an announcements page (for making a blog-like page) a file cabinet (for uploading files), and a list (for entering spreadsheet items). This makes it quite easy to public many kinds of content.
Easy publishing of content such as spreadsheets, documents, calendars, and photos. Google supports easy embedding of other Google technologies such as Docs, GCal calendars, and Picasa photos/albums.
Collaborative site editing. Google Sites has the same collaborative editing format as Google Docs, making it easy for several people to work on a website together.
Automation of site creation tasks. Google Sites gets many of the details right. For instance, you can copy and paste the contents of another website into a Google Site with the formatting preserved and images appropriately displayed and linked. Google Sites also makes it easier to include an image: it supports automatic resizing and automatically inserts a link (which can easily be removed) to the real photo.
Customizable templates. Google Sites supports many design templates and also allows the user to change properties such as the appearance of the navigation map (along the top or on the side, tabs or boxes, etc.) and colors and fonts for the text. Google Sites also allows the user to insert a logo into the header (More actions > Manage site > Site layout > change logo)--the GWAMIT site above was done this way.
Escape hatches. You can view and edit the HTML source of any page. I find this helpful when there is a weird space I can't get rid of in the Sites editor--WYSIWYG* can only take you so far.

If you want to make a site with a unique design or a lot of functionality, Google Sites may not be the way to go. As for design, Google imposes a fairly standard template onto the site and doesn't allow editing of style sheets, making it difficult to get a page with a different format. As for functionality, it is not completely straightforward to embed Javascript for things like Facebook Community pages and Twitter feeds. Google Sites does allow the user to insert Gadgets wrapping HTML/Javascript, so it should be possible to wrap arbitrary functionality inside a Gadget and then put it in the page. (There is at least one gadget for wrapping Javascript, but it didn't work for me.) I found this helpful post about creating a Google Gadget to wrap Javascript to display a Twitter feed.

To get started with Google sites, go to sites.google.com, activate your account, and start making pages. To create a new site, click "Create new site." Once you choose a template and a name, you'll be directed to a page for editing your site's homepage, the page that shows up under http://sites.google.com/site/[your site name]. You can edit this site just like a Google Doc. You may also create other pages for your site, link to them, move them, etc. Google has a nice getting started guide here.

* What You See Is What You Get.

From GWAMIT: Do women prefer the "mommy track?"

2011-08-15T19:21:00.001-07:00

I have a post on the Grad Women at MIT blog expressing my disagreements with the conclusions of this article, "Why the Gender Gap Won't Go Away. Ever."

Before Grilling Season is Over, Try Watermelon

2011-08-08T06:35:00.000-07:00

I was recently made aware of NY Times food columnist Mark Bittman's recipe for grilled watermelon and prepared it for the first time yesterday. Grilled watermelon burgers with cheese are a surprisingly delicious combination of sweet and savory flavors. They are also quite easy to make. I recommend being generous with salt and pepper and also using a milder cheese.

Clothes Shopping on a Grad Student Budget

2011-08-03T12:02:00.000-07:00

The bottom of my wallet has been taunting me this summer, my first without a Microsoft internship. Determined not to let the halving of my income degrade my quality of life, I have been investigating lower-cost alternatives to my usual indulgences. Initially skeptical of buying used goods, I have made significant spending reductions in the clothing category by turning to thrift and consignment stores.

The main reason to buy used clothing is to acquire interesting accent pieces (either vintage or design) that are higher quality and interesting than comparably-priced alternatives at department or chain stores. My prized vintage purchases (both under $20) include a purple dolman-sleeved button-down dress and a black dice print dress with dice buttons on the back. My favorite gently-worn designer purchases (both under $30) include a khaki Marc Jacobs jacket and a gold-sequin Trina Turk shirt. I have compiled the following tips for picking out interesting/appropriate/timeless pieces among used clothes.

First of all, thrift and consignment stores can be quite confusing to navigate due to the large amount of and variety in the clothing. Here are some tips for approaching the shopping experience:

Figure out how the store is organized. Racks may be organized by color, by size, or by some other criteria. Figuring out the organization of the store can help you find what you want much more quickly.
Browse methodically. It's can be overwhelming to browse at random when there is only one garment per look/size/color, so it can be good to pick a category (for instance, summer t-shirts) and look only in that category until you are finished.
Have an idea of what cut, colors, fabrics you are looking for. This goes for clothes shopping in general, but being able to quickly rule out items of clothing will make your shopping experience much more efficient. Knowing what size you are in different brands will also help.

Once you have found an article of clothing that you like, you should make sure it is a worthwhile purchase. Here are things I have learned:

Check the quality of the clothing. Carefully inspect the garment for stains and tears. Make sure the garment will not fall apart after one washing.
Don't go for trendy pieces. If someone else has already given away a piece of trendy clothing, you may not be able to get much more wear out of it.
Recognize good brands and watch out for fakes. Having a good sense of which brands make clothing that will last through a few washing and wearings will help you pick out worthwhile purchases. Knowing which brands tend to make poor-quality trendy pieces will also help you avoid bad purchases. It is also important to watch out for fakes.

I recommend buying the following things used:

Statement pieces. It may be a combination of the fact that people tire of statement pieces quickly and that they don't get reworn too much, but I come across quite a few interesting shirts in good condition.
Cardigans and layering pieces. It's nice to have many of them, they usually aren't what make an outfit interesting, and it does not matter that they look brand new. Also, I have found more than one nice cardigan for $10.
Leather belts. A tip from my friend Rachel, who finds belts on eBay: these seem to hold up pretty well and cost much less used.
Vintage-style clothing. Vintage pieces look cooler if they look more authentic and you could potentially find something nice for a fraction of the designer vintage-chic price.
Formal dresses. Formal dresses often do not get much wear: I have seen very nice dresses at consignment stores for very low prices. (I have seen a Vera Wang silk evening gown for something like $38 at the Garment District.)

I would advise acquiring button-down shirts caution: I've had to resew the buttonholes on a couple of shirts.

Here are some thrift and consignment stores around Boston:

The Garment District: this place has everything: a dollar-a-pound section for random lucky finds, a costume section, gently-worn designer, and gently-worn other used clothing.
Poor Little Rich Girl: a chain of well-curated gently-worn designer.
Second Time Around: another chain of well-curated gently-worn designer.
Raspberry Beret: "consignment, vintage, and unique items."

I have a friend who also likes Boomerang's, but more for furniture and home items. Have fun!

Implicit Bias and Affirmative Action

2011-06-11T07:43:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, the MIT Tech ran an opinion piece "It's good to be king" ("Innate ability may explain gender gaps") raising questions about the "deeply suspicious" nature of the "subtle bias" used to justify measures taken to increase participation of women in the sciences at MIT. This well-written piece argued that the gender-dependence of intelligence variability may explain the gaps of women in the sciences. The Tech ran a subsequent counterpoint "Intelligence variability is not gender-dependent" that argues against the intelligence variability claim, pointing out that this is not true across cultures.

I am glad that The Tech is taking on this interesting question and would encourage them to dig a bit deeper into the literature of and issues surrounding gender inequity in the sciences. I wrote a Letter to the Editor that ran yesterday about how in the argument about affirmative action, it is important to consider the (often implicit) biases that the action is intended to counteract.

Grad Women @ MIT: Reflections from the First Full Year

2011-04-17T20:08:00.001-07:00

My main non-research interest at MIT has been Graduate Women at MIT, which I helped found in fall 2009. Last year I was involved with establishing GWAMIT with the MIT administration and leading the Spring Kick-off, our first week of programming demonstrating the tone and content we envisioned for future events. My main GWAMIT projects this year have been co-chairing the planning committee for the inaugural Spring Empowerment Conference, developing the organization structure, and growing the GWAMIT web presence (on the website, blog, Facebook, and Twitter).

GWAMIT has had amazing growth this last year and a half: we went from having a leadership structure of three people (Kay Furman, Megan Brewster, and me) to a leadership structure that includes an Executive Board, a General Board of over 30 departmental representatives, and active planning committees for each of the flagship events (the mentoring program, leadership conference, and empowerment conference)--you may read some of our personal mission statements here. We have now become a centralized point of contact for MIT's graduate women, with over 650 members on our weekly digest, over 50 mentoring groups in the mentoring program, and 250 unique attendees at each of the conferences, which have had five events each. The GWAMIT community includes not just graduate women but also undergrads, postdocs, alumni, faculty, and staff--some of whom are men and some of whom are affiliated with other area universities. In this first full year of programming, we have raised over $20K from generous MIT and external sources.

I have compiled the following advice for people starting a student organization or similar kind of group.

Be concrete. In the beginning, we had to justify why we wanted to start GWAMIT, how GWAMIT planned to be different from existing campus resources and departmental women's groups, and how we were going to achieve these goals. To answer these questions we did detailed research on statistics about women at MIT, existing resources, and potential sources of funding. We described our plans in terms of concrete details, complete with timelines and budgets. Having concrete data helped address most questions.

Dream big, but have realistic plans. From the beginning, we had the ambitious goal of launching all three flagship programs. We understood, however, that with limited funding and human resources we would have to keep the programs at a manageable scale. Thanks to Kay's realism, our initial plans for the programs required a minimal budget and were only intended to serve a group size that could be handled even if we did not recruit more members immediately. Knowing our vision allowed us to scale up each of the program when the funding and enthusiasm poured in, but having the bare-bones backup plan allowed us to launch in the first place.

Execute as soon as possible. Before we had funding or members during our first full semester of operation, I pushed to have the Spring Kick-off. We bootstrapped our funding by laying out possible sources of funding and approached each potential funder with our funding plan and how they would fit in. We recruited our initial planning committee of members who were passionate about helping out and believed in the cause. The Spring Kick-off was a success, with five catered events, including a keynote on implicit bias and a panel on collaboration from the perspectives of academic women. Having the kick-off was beneficial because 1) it showed our funders and constituents we were serious, 2) it demonstrated to everyone what GWAMIT's niche would be at MIT, and 3) it spread the word about the organization and got people onto our mailing lists. The momentum from the Spring Kick-off helped us recruit members for flagship planning and helped us establish the credibility to get additional funding. Execution is the best way to be organized and to be concrete.

Leverage collaborations. When it was just Kay, Megan, and me, we leveraged each others' strengths and interests and also the strengths and interests of our collaborators. Each of us had different areas we were more interested in pursuing (mentoring, empowerment, establishing internal MIT relations, establishing external relations, etc.) and we worked together to allow each of us to pursue our interests while making sure the big picture still made sense. We could have a distributed execution model because we trusted each other to make the right decisions without having all three of us present at all meetings or for all small decisions. Leveraging our collaborations outside GWAMIT was also incredibly helpful: for example, for the Spring Kick-off we had events with external collaborators such as keynote speaker Freada Klein, workplace diversity expert, and internal collaborators such as MIT Ombuds, who helped us lead a workshop on navigating difficult situations. We have, individually and as a group, learned the advantage of being organized and communicating to collaborators how they can help us.

Allow people to pursue their passions. GWAMIT has only been able to execute programming at such a large scale because so many members people who propose and execute ideas. The planning committees, and also the executive board, operates in a democratic way. The committee structure is in place only to make sure the planning is on task: event leads who propose an idea or take on someone else's idea is responsible for developing event content. This has led to innovative content like the online personal branding workshop (Empowerment Conference '11) and innovative event structures like the keynote that was half Q&A (Leadership Conference '10). Event leads have done fantastic jobs in executing events, in large part because, as one former event lead puts it, they are driven to contribute not for the credit but out of personal interest.

Actively manage your image. There are two ways we have been managing our image: through our online presence and through our programming.

We had a GWAMIT website and logo before we had members. On our website we had our mission, proposed events, a list of MIT and Boston area resources we had compiled, and an events calendar. Having a professional online image was something tangible that could demonstrate to our funders, supporters, and future members that we we meant business--and also what that business was. Managing our online image gave us agency in shaping people's views of us: when deciding what to think of GWAMIT, they could get the information directly from us and how we present ourselves.

GWAMIT's brand also includes our event content and execution. We choose event content that is innovative, provocative, and non-overlapping with existing resources. We also pay attention to advertising, putting effort into designing and disseminating our posters (see the Empowerment Conference '11 keynote poster here). At the events, we greet attendees, set the mood by playing music, and have high-quality catering at events we choose to cater. We also bring the GWAMIT banner and also tablecloths and flowers when relevant. People have come to associate GWAMIT with not just a set of ideas, but also a style. This style gives people a good idea of to expect with us and also, we hope, inspires people to join us.

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Of course, the primary legacy of any group depends on its sustainability. Looking forward, it will be important to establish sustainable organization and funding structures and ways of passing on experience from GWAMIT leaders. I also have post on the GWAMIT blog about specific areas of interest for next year.

I am lucky to be working with such brilliant, driven, and effective colleagues in such a supportive environment, within GWAMIT and at MIT. I am excited for what is to come.

Interested in getting involved with GWAMIT? Feel free to e-mail me (jeanyang [at] mit).

Social Media, Online Branding, and Twitter Plugs

2011-04-17T19:30:00.001-07:00

I've spent the last couple of weeks fascinated by the democratization of the ability to brand oneself. A couple of years ago, articles started showing up on how to use Facebook to project a consistent and cohesive image. The theme of branding appeared with vigor during Graduate Women at MIT's Spring Empowerment Conference, especially during the keynote on how to find power in unexpected places (one of which is in branding and selling yourself) and more explicitly during the Online Personal Branding Workshop. (See the blog post on the whole week here.) Social media has allowed nobodies like me to manipulate my image and establish social credibility in ways previously only available to the Jackie Onassises and Coca-Colas of the world.

A couple of years late (but not too late, I hope), I recently set up Twitter accounts for myself (@jeanqasaur) and for Graduate Women at MIT (@gwamitweb). It has been interesting figuring out how to compose compelling tweets and how to get more followers. Follow GWAMIT to stay in the loop about women, science, and/or academia. Follow me for posts on computer science/tech and other things I find interesting (academia, human nature, life).

Anyone out there have good advice for how to use Twitter (personally, professionally, and personally vs. professionally) or have good pointers to literature on what to make Twitter? Please recommend in comments!

(I'm also trying to figure out how to use Facebook for organizations. Advice?)

Grad Women @ MIT Empowerment Conference

2011-03-08T07:54:00.000-08:00

I have been organizing the Graduate Women @ MIT Empowerment Conference, happening Wednesday-Friday this week. Events include a keynote by Cindy Gallop (who has branded herself as herself and gone on to change the world however she wants to), a Power Couples Panel, and a panel on the relevance of modern feminism (titled "I'm not a feminist, but..." to appeal to those who don't yet identify as feminists). There are also workshops on communications and online personal branding.

The conference website is here and there is a Facebook event here.

A Weekend in Brussels

2011-03-02T19:16:00.000-08:00

After attending the the Seminar on Self-Repairing Programs at Schloss Dagstuhl in Germany, I spent Valentine's Day weekend in Brussels with my friend Kate. (Photo album here.)

Three nights is intense for seeing a city, but Brussels was well-suited for our style of whirlwind tourism. Not only did Brussels live up to Belgium's reputation of having the best chocolate, mussels, fries, and beer in the world, but it proved to be an amazing destination both for seeing old buildings and for dancing. The trip was also linguistically fascinating: there is a mix of French and Flemish spoken in Belgium*. Our Brussels trip was made more great by two accidental brilliant decisions we made.

The first brilliant decision we made was booking the first two nights at the Hostel Grand Place, a charming (read: tiny) hostel just 20 meters away from Grand Place, Belgium's historic city center. Though it was difficult to find at first, it was impossible to fail at tourism after walking out the door. After a confusing 30 minutes of getting completely lost trying to arrive there from the Central Station (nobody in Brussels knows how to get anywhere, including a cab driver who charge me 10 Euros and dropped me off after two blocks because I was "almost there"), I finally reunited with Kate at the hostel. We had a lovely dinner at the Roi d'Espagne**, where I enjoyed a heavy meal of endives covered with ham covered with cheese and we both enjoyed Jupiler beer and cassis wine. Grand Place turned out to be close to most things our guide book said was good, including the famous Delirium Cafe, which is in an obscure "impasse" (alley) with several other bars. En route to Delirium we again got extremely lost and encountered many geographically clueless Belgians, but we did accidentally see many key Brussels sights (such as the Brussels icon Manneken Pis) along the way. We ended the night by consuming frites with hot chili and aioli sauce. Apparently three-quarters the way through I exclaimed, "It just hit me how amazing these are."

Kate and I spent most of Saturday in Bruges, which is an hour by train and which our guide book told us is the "Venice of the north." It may be more like the "Disneyland of the north" given how touristy and insanely picturesque it is: at every corner there is a medieval monastery or some canal with random beautiful buildings. Apparently Bruges is so well-preserved because there was an economic downturn after the Middle Ages that caused it to be abandoned until fairly recently. We spent the day walking the streets of Bruges, taking breaks only to eat waffles and enjoy mussels (though we had 3-5 failed dinner attempts due to it being Valentine's Day weekend and Bruges being the most romantic destination in the world). At some point we even randomly stumbled upon the windmills of Bruges and clutched each other with joy and wonder. (We also wandered into the English convent and met a nun.) We ended our Bruges adventure by purchasing chocolate (Leonidas, which turned out to only be fourth best) and lace (for which Bruges is known). Despite the fact that there are so many tourists, Bruges seems authentic and thus worth visiting.

Saturday night we ventured into the Marolles neighborhood to Fuse, a happening two-story nightclub with excellent electronic and house music. Brussels is quite the place to party: people seem to have good taste in music, men dance (and groups of men will go dancing just to enjoy the music, it seems), and people stay out late. Kate and I felt like we were ending the night early at 3am. Indeed, we later learned that when Fuse closes at 7am people continue dancing the morning away at an after-hours club until 2pm.

Sunday we learned of the brilliance of our second accidental decision of booking the hostel too late to extend it a third night. The consequence of this was that on Sunday we stayed with Julien, a charming (read: fun and hospitable) Belgian friend-of-a-friend. Julien took it upon himself to give us a "real" tour of Brussels and taught us that Delirium is touristy and that Marcolini (not Leonidas, as the guide book tells us) is actually the best Belgian chocolate. We learned that the real way to consume waffles is while walking on the street and that Brussels is a city of people who mean serious business. Julien also introduced me to cherry beer, which is one of humankind's more impressive inventions.

Valentine's Day morning we said goodbye over a decadent breakfast of speculoos biscuits and parted ways. What a weekend.

* Flemish is mostly spoken in the north (Flanders) and French is mostly spoken in the south. Street signs in Brussels have two names, which can become rather confusing if you are not French/Flemish bilingual. Something really interesting is that some advertisements are solely in Flemish. Julien tells us this is because Flemish is the language associated with more wealth.
** The guide book said this was the best place to have a beer in Grand Place and that it would be difficult to get a table. Both of these statements did not seem entirely accurate. This trip showed me how little guide books are to be trusted.

Coming Soon: Goodplates

2011-02-24T08:37:00.001-08:00

Wish you had a better way to keep track of your meals out, share them with friends, and organize food outings? Some friends are working on a food/restaurant-sharing website called Goodplates. Sign up here.

Romania Road Trip

2010-12-16T19:28:00.000-08:00

The long-awaited post on my October trip is finally here.

High-level Synopsis.
I tagged along with my friend Florian on the tail end of a Balkans road trip and then spent a few days in Vienna. The itinerary included Serbia (2 days), Romania (5.5 days), Hungary (1.5 days), and Austria (4 days). The Romania portion involved a lot of driving with my German friends Florian and Lorenz. The Austria portion involved a lot of running around Vienna being loud and American with my friend Kate. (Balkans-related photos here; Vienna photos here.)

The Trip.
I started by meeting some German students in Belgrade, Serbia, where they were stopping during their Balkans road trip. The eastern Europeans in the group introduced me to the meat-eating culture: I broke my no-red-meat principle to sample the ćevapčići and pljeskavica. (If you go, make sure to have burek for breakfast, too.) Belgrade is intense: people party hard amidst remnants of the NATO bombing in the 1990's. (We went to a really cool club in an abandoned building.) Our Serbian friend described the culture as "People live like there is no tomorrow."

After a couple of days in Belgrade we made our way to Romania in Florian's parents' minivan. We passed the Serbian town of Golubec, where we drove past a medieval fortress. It was not sufficiently satisfying to just observe the fortress from the road, so we scaled the side of the fortress to get to the top. The dopamine high from fearing certain death throughout the treacherous climb led us to instate the tradition of having one adventure per day. The most dangerous adventures may have involved the other road trip participants going to sleep while I drove in the night.

Our first Romanian destination was Targu Jiu, where we found a place to eat by asking some pedestrians and where we found a hotel by driving to a street where we thought there might be hotels. (The first hotel was too expensive, but they pointed us to a more reasonably priced one.) There I learned about the sculptor Brâncuşi, who walked to Paris to meet Auguste Rodin (of "The Thinker" fame) and then turned down an invitation to study with him, saying "nothing grows in the shade of a tall tree."

After Targu Jiu we spent a few days in the city of Sibiu, which has beautiful churches and other architecture. We drove out to some locations including a fortified church, the medieval town of Sighişoara, and Vlad Dracul's castle. We were particularly haunted by the village of Hunedora, which housed the ruins of a beautiful castle alongside industrial ruins from the Communist era. In the midst of all this were these ornamental gypsy houses decorated with tin with begging gypsy children all around. We exited Romania by way of Timișoara, the most modern city we visited in Romania. There we saw the rose garden, many churches, and Piazza Unirii, a beautiful square. We are not sure why, but we witnessed at least 3-4 weddings in the day we were there.

On the way back to Vienna we drove through Hungary without a map or idea of where to eat/stay. We drove toward Budapest, stopping in the city of Szeged for dinner. We again asked some pedestrians for a dinner recommendation but ended up going to an amazing restaurant on the recommendation of a friend of a friend. There we tried the local specialty, carp soup (the Hungarians love their paprika), while listening to live traditional Hungarian folk music. We then had a bigger adventure in Budapest, where we drove the streets trying to find a hostel from Florian's memory of his last visit there ten months previously. Budapest turned out to be much more of a hot spot than the Romanian cities: the first two places we tried had no vacancies. (It turns out that it is currently trendy to go to Budapest, Prague, and Vienna on the same trip.) We spent most of the next day relaxing in the geothermal baths (which had a surprisingly large and varied selection of baths, saunas, and steam rooms) before heading back to Vienna.

In Vienna I met my friend Kate and we did the standard tourist activities. On the first day (which was also my 24th birthday) I had half a day before Kate arrived, during which I walked through the quarters, got acquainted with a a live Mozart statue, visited the Mozarthaus, and walked into an amazing artist's studio because I liked the way the paintings looked. Kate and I spent our time hanging out in cafes and palaces. We proudly represented America by loudly saying "RAWWR!" (see photo from the Pratersauna, a club in a former sauna) whenever there was doubt as to our origins. All in all, Vienna was as (everything had a curlicue or flourish) as expected.

Reflections.
The driving was quite memorable. There is no interstate highway system in use, so we drove through the main road, which most often had two lanes and passed through the centers of villages. Driving was not as fast as expected given the 60 km/h speed limit, the presence of tractors, cows, and baby carriages, and the difficulty of passing slower vehicles. Night driving was particularly exciting because there were no lights and many exciting curves marked with multiple glowing arrows. Florian often drove the day shifts because of his love for the "national sport" of passing cars. As a result the bulk of my driving experience to date has involved night driving in the Transylvanian woods. I am surprised we are still alive.

I loved Romania a surprising amount. The countryside was beautifully natural: for the first time I observed someone cutting grass with a scythe. On one drive we encountered the most breathtaking sunset I have ever seen. It was also interesting going through Romania during an off tourism season because there were no lines and also no special performances for tourists. I am really glad I went to Romania before it became more modernized (and before there is an interstate highway).

A final important thing I learned on this trip is that you can travel in luxury with carry-on luggage using do-it-yourself travel size containers.

The Art of Taking Breaks

2010-09-04T19:21:00.000-07:00

The serious runners I know take one day off from running each week and alternate training and rest days. Most runners who race also understand to taper: easing up before a race so that your body can heal and reap the benefits of the training. Good coaches teach runners to honor the limitations of their bodies and to take precautions to prevent injury. Given the high injury (burnout, loss of inspiration, apathy, etc.) rate in academic programs, professors should preach analogous rest-based approaches to academic challenges.

I could have used such advice, as I certainly did not appreciate the value of mental breaks for most of my life. My first two years of college were governed by a rigorous schedule of studying, eating, sleeping, and light socializing. I did not realize how extreme my lifestyle was until my friends Jeremy and Marianne suggested that I do some activity with them as a break the night before a big exam. I looked at them blankly. I did not take breaks longer than 15 minutes.

Fortunately, I have moved away from such a regimented lifestyle with such short breaks. After my work came to require more creativity and after reading articles about daydreaming gives our brain critical downtime for our creative processes, I came to appreciate downtime. A repetitive stress injury and my measures to recover (yoga, taking more time off) have taught me that stepping away from my work can help productivity. I have also started taking breaks from from digital devices altogether. (There is a nice NY Times article about how digital devices are not conducive to rest.) My experience has shown that small breaks can be immensely helpful for productivity.

As a move from mental sprints (short deadlines and well-defined tasks) to mental marathons (the long deadlines and ambiguous tasks of my Ph.D.), my next conquest goal is the art of the extended break. After speaking with some friends who went on meditation retreats, I looked into doing one and discovered that the required length for a first retreat was a few weeks. This had seemed like blasphemy: I had not been away from e-mail for longer than a a couple of days since graduating high school. I have since come around to the view that the brain's rest process cannot be rushed: if you need a mental break, you should accept the time that your mind needs to recover. The solution to feeling overwhelmed by tasks at hand may not be to slog through and face them unproductively, but to step completely away and return when ready.

In the last few years, I have come to the view that practicing Frederick Taylorism (maximizing productivity according to a greedy algorithm) on my life only works with small, well-defined tasks. If I am pushing your mind to its limits, strategically resting (for possibly long periods of time) can take me much further.

By the way, Cal Newport has a related post on Study Hacks where he advises students to do less so they can enjoy what they do more (and thus be better at it).

America's Unnecessarily Crowded Prisons

2010-08-16T22:37:00.001-07:00

I read this column by Neal Peirce about how America locks up all kinds of people for unnecessarily long periods of time. According to Peirce and his sources, people caught for street drug trafficking and heck, even importing orchids without properly doing paperwork are thrown into jail alongside rapists and murderers. Peirce does a nice job of highlighting the present problematic situation.

Friendship Among the Self-Reliant

2010-08-15T22:15:00.000-07:00

My college roommate Marianne sent me this Wilson Quarterly article by Daniel Akst calling for Americans to value friendship more. We are more disconnected from each other than ever before: though half of American adults are unmarried and over a quarter live alone, we have only one third the number of non-family confidants than we did two decades ago--and a quarter have "no such confidants at all."

In the article, Akst provides hypotheses for why friendship has become so weak. A major reason is the rise of false friendship: University of Chicago psychologist John Cacioppo say that Americans are lonely "not because we have fewer social contacts, but because the ones we have are more harried and less meaningful." Other factors include the tendency for people to buy what they need (therapy, pets), the "cult of busyness" (people are too busy to develop meaningful intimate relationships), the culture's "reverence for self-sufficiency," the "remorseless eroticization of human relations" (providing a context where "bromance" is a legitimate concept), divorce, and the "wildly inflated view of matrimony to subsume much of the territory once occupied by friendship."

I particularly like the way Akst addresses the phenomenon of viewing one's significant other as the one-stop shop for social needs. He writes, "Your BFF nowadays—at least until the divorce—is supposed to be your spouse... except that spouses and friends fill different needs, and cultivating some close extramarital friendships might even take some of the pressure off at home."

This article provides an excellent reminder for us not to let work or a significant other distract us from developing meaningful friendships. Sadly, too many people forget that friends are important for providing stability and happiness.

Guided mental conditioning

2010-08-10T22:18:00.000-07:00

As I've gotten bored in my ten-year relationship with running, I have been exploring various group workout options. Participating in instructor-led workouts has been surprisingly good for improving my mental strength.

My latest activity is an indoor cycling class I do 1-2 times a week at the Pro Club, the swank gym where Microsoft gives us a virtually free membership. For those of you unfamiliar with these classes, they have an enthusiastic instructor on a bike telling us to work harder so we can give it our all when we're chasing Lance Armstrong up the last hill in the Tour de France. It's somewhat goofy of me to do indoor cycling when I haven't used my bike for over a year, but I love the intensity of the workouts. Each class the instructor leads a different workout: there have been various hill workouts and interval ones. The instructors have been surprisingly good at getting me to push myself: they tell us how our body should be reacting to each resistance/cadence (breathing should be heavy, heart rate should go up in the first 10 seconds, etc.), they don't tell us in advance how many intervals are left, and at the end of the intense parts they emphasize how little time is left ("Twenty more seconds! Give it all you've got!"). It's kind of like having a coxswain--in fact, these workouts are quite similar to the machine workouts I used to do on the crew team*. Some of the workouts have been, as one instructor calls it, "quite a head trip" because they require so much focus on exerting power while maintaining form. I leave many workouts barely able to walk--it has been a while since I have been able to push myself to run this intensely.

This summer I have also continued doing heated power yoga 3-4 times a week. I have been doing baptiste yoga at Be Luminous, an amazing (and amazingly Lululemon-land**) studio by the Westlake Whole Foods. Not only do the instructors lead physically intense yet fun workouts, but they also pay attention to precision of alignment and the mental aspects (focus on breath, being present) in a way that leaves me feeling incredible afterward. The instructors coax us to push our limits by describing the physical beauty of the poses and the intensity we should feel. Yoga tests my focus in a very real way: if I lose my concentration, I will likely fall out of a pose. I leave the studio feeling mentally and physically cleansed.

Both cycling and yoga force me to be in the moment and focus on the physical: the combination (along with some moderate running) has kept me (arguably) sane after long days of reading bytecode***. I encourage skeptics to try out such "group fitness" activities--other people can get you out of your head much better than you can.

* I used to row crew, where the coxswain is the person who tells the rowers how quickly and how hard to stroke.
** My fellow yogis are rather well-dressed in high-end yoga gear as a result of what I call the "yoga arms race." Each age group of people sees people 10 years older (and 10 years wealthier) looking better than they do, so they spend more on flattering spandex.
*** Coconut juice has also been a key factor.

Morality TV

2010-08-09T21:45:00.000-07:00

As I have recently gotten more into reality TV*, I have been pleasantly surprised/amused by how it has made me realize I could be a better person.

The most fascinating of the bunch, in a trainwreck/rubbernecking way, is True Beauty, a show where contestants are secretly judged on their "inner beauty." This season the premise was that the contestants were competing to be the "face of Vegas." While they are competing in challenges revealed to them (being voted the best tour guide on a bus tour, shooting the best ad for a restaurant wearing only food, etc.), the contestants are also being judged on their performance in hidden challenges (opportunities to steal, cheat, help someone, etc.). I initially felt somewhat dirty about the voyeurism of the show and about the hypocrisy of the judges (and the show itself!), who make fun of the contestants for not being nicer people. Human nature compelled me to continue watching, and though I found some of the criteria for evaluating inner beauty to be questionable (preferring sins of omission to sins of commission, etc.), the show made me realize how much nicer I could be. By the end the judges were splitting hairs--it came down to things like who threw a temper tantrum under pressure vs. who talked about other contestants behind their backs. I was impressed with some of the contestants' niceness despite being under the pressure of being on a reality show for weeks. It was refreshing to see diva behavior not being rewarded**.

Another show that is actually quality is What Would You Do?. In this show they set up hidden cameras at the site of various social experiments and see how onlookers react. For instance, they have someone stealing a bike and vary the gender and race. (When a beautiful blond woman steals a bike, everyone offers to help, even when she says it is not hers.) Some other scenarios include a girl at a bar being taken away by a stranger, shoppers who are the victims of racism, and a lottery ticket holder who is cheated by the store owner. For each scenario, they have interviews with academics who study the particular situation at hand, people who have been involved in similar real-life situations, and the people who walked into the hidden camera experiment. This show does a great job of making people aware of situations they should be aware of and providing some guidance on how to properly react. (For instance, it's important to speak up if you see a girl who you think may be assaulted because she could be killed.) Since this show is more serious and less flashy than True Beauty I have, unfortunately, only watched two or three episodes. (But don't let this stop you!)

While we're on the subject of reality TV, I would like to briefly discuss this season's The Bachelorette, starring Ali Fedotowsky. To paraphrase one of my friends, it's amazing: this woman is dating (at least, initially) 20+ guys and managing them well. Yes, the show can be cheesy and they sometimes cut the footage in a groan-inducing way, but the way Ali forms and maintains relationships with these men is quite interesting. (This is what courtship looks like when it's not through IRC!) I have gotten some of my friends hooked; I encourage you to check it out if you haven't already.

So... If you are waiting on work/e-mail responses for me, I have been hiring my, um, proxy to watch and summarize these shows for me. ;) (Okay, I need some form of entertainment while cooking, right?)

* Note that my relationship with TV is fairly new; at the end of the spring I was confused that the shows I watched were no longer on. (For those of you less aware of real life than I am: TV shows come in units of seasons.)
** But it's predictable that reality TV would have come to this. Rubbernecking in the lives of angry, unbalanced people has become so ten years ago.

Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting 2010

2010-07-04T21:03:00.000-07:00

I just returned from 60th Nobel Laureate Meeting for chemistry, physics, and physiology in Lindau, Germany. What a week!

The Lindau meetings provide a way for Nobel laureates to pass on advice and inspiration to young researchers. In 1951, Count Lennart Bernadotte became the patron of a meeting that included 7 laureates, 400 doctors, and 70 students. This year, Count Bernadotte's daughter Countess Bettina Bernadotte presided over the meeting of 59 laureates and 650 young researchers. The group of young researchers was quite diverse, with 171 from Germany, 94 from the United States, 36 from China, and representation across many other countries. The program consists of four days of morning lectures followed by parallel sessions of afternoon talks, panels, and discussions. The meeting provided a stimulating atmosphere to reflect upon how to solve society's big problems.

Through talks, discussions, and panels, the Nobel laureates gave excellent advice about pursuing scientific research. Professor Oliver Smithies shared his passion for doing experiments and described his procedure for keeping organized lab notebooks. When asked about his hard work, he said that he viewed it not as working hard but as playing hard. Professor Martin Chalfie talked about the cumulative nature of scientific success and the different routes by which one could arrive at it. Some laureates discussed the importance of translational research (actually working with patients); other laureates emphasized the importance of basic research, talking about how they ended up solving problems that they did not predict when choosing an initial research direction. Many of us did not know whether to feel better or worse when one laureate said that after winning the Nobel Prize, he still has to cite possible reviewers of his funding proposals. :)

Attending the meeting helped me to better understand the Nobel laureates as real people. Professor Chalfie talked about how he had not been a science superstar earlier in life; Professor Kurt Wuthrich said that he had come uhttp://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=29172085&postID=2815301772702208782pon his work in proteins through his early interest in sports. When asked about his non-science passions, Professor Smithies said that he was also passionate about flying and about his wife, and that the ideal Saturday consists of flying in the morning, taking his wife to lunch, and then doing experiments in the afternoon. At lunch, physics laureates Professors Cronin, Smoot, 't Hooft, and Gross were very approachable and talked about everything from pranks they pulled as students to the technological singularity. Many of the laureates also brought their spouses who were not in science--this provided a nice view into their lives.

At the meeting, the Nobel laureates also discussed social issues that scientists should think about. They addressed the usual topics of global warming and the energy crisis. Prof. Christian de Duve gave a talk on evolution and said that the future of human life is threatened by overpopulation as a result of evolutionary success and suggested population control as a possible effective solution. Prof. Harry Kroto gave a talk (which I did not attend, but heard about from many people) about the "GooYouWiki" world and the importance of educating the public about science. Science communication was a common thread among many of the topics and panels: it is necessary not just for having lasting impact in one's field, but also for having impact of science policy.

I was happy about the meeting with respect to representation of women in science. Though the ratio was quite skewed when it came to the laureates, the ratio was much better among the young researchers. Chemistry laureate Professor Ada Yonath talked about her granddaughter at the end of her lecture to show young women that they could do science and have a family, too. Dr. Francoise Barre-Sinoussi talked about the importance of having a supportive partner and told the story of how, in lab on her wedding day, she received a phone call from her partner asking whether she was still coming. Professor Smithies, when asked about the leaky pipeline of women in science, said that it is important to recognize that some women want time to raise children. In his evolution talk, Professor de Duve said that we may be better off putting women in charge, since females may be more wise as a result of having evolved to consider the future when taking care of the young.

Besides being an incredible academic/research learning experience, the meeting was also a great social experience. As you can see in my Lindau photo album, many of my memories are not from talks but from social events. The Monday dinner was quite a bonding experience when everyone joined together to be paired with a stranger in dancing the polonaise. I loved meeting fellow young researchers at events such as the Grill & Chill, the Bavarian evening, and the boat trip to the isle of Mainau. It was interesting to learn about the academic, research, and life experiences about people working in different fields and research environments from me.

I am grateful for the Bernadotte family, Microsoft Research (my nominating institution), and everyone else who made this experience possible!

Quitting Coffee

2010-06-20T16:47:00.000-07:00

It has been four weeks since I quit*; it had been four years since my relationship with coffee began. I am glad to put that period of my life behind me.

After years of looking for more time in my day, I thought I had found the solution by including coffee in my morning routine and decreasing my quantity of sleep. My decision had been backed by some pop scientific research that coffee could be a health drink: the negative correlation between coffee and Alzheimer's, the negative correlation between coffee and gout, etc. (In fact, I have a blog post here about why I started drinking coffee.)

My decision to quit was driven by several reasons. I found that I sleep better (at the right times and more deeply) when I haven't had coffee, coffee is hard on my stomach, and that I had become quite addicted (in that I function significantly more poorly in the absence thereof). I had also developed an awareness of and distaste for how wound up coffee makes me.

Quitting has been difficult for the obvious alertness reasons. In addition, my concentration got worse and I felt hungry more often. My hypothesis is that as a stimulant, caffeine stimulates the part of my brain that helps me focus. The hunger can be explained by the "fact" (checked against the internet) that caffeine can be an appetite suppressant. Not being caffeinated has also made social interactions more difficult, perhaps because it has become more difficult to focus on conversations. The good news is that all of these issues have (slowly) been going away.

Despite the challenges, I have been enjoying my coffee-free existence. My quality of sleep has improved, which has helped me to be more naturally alert and focused. It has been a relief not to have to look for sources of caffeine on weekends and when out of town. In general, I have been feeling less wound up and more well.

For those of you thinking about quitting: don't be afraid to do it!

* Somewhat ironic is that it happened the day I arrived in Seattle. I have since had decaf twice, but that is it.

PLDI 2010 in Toronto, Canada!

2010-06-12T19:54:00.000-07:00

I just returned from PLDI 2010 in Toronto, Canada. The papers, talks, and non-technical content were all great!

This year parallelism and concurrency seemed to be the hot topics, as there were two tracks for each of those. According to the program chair Alex Aiken (if I remember correctly), there were relatively high acceptance rates for papers on types, static analyses, and programming language designs. Some papers that I particularly liked include Viktor Kuncak et. al.'s Complete Functional Synthesis about using decision procedures at runtime for synthesizing program expressions, Khoo Yit Phang et. al.'s Mixing Type Checking and Symbolic Execution on a hybrid type-checker/static analyzer, and my adviser Armando Solar-Lezama's Smooth Interpretation with Swarat Chaudhury on smoothing program spaces for analysis/synthesis. The other papers in the verification session with me (Zach Tatlock's Bringing Extensibility to Verified Compilers, Adam Chlipala's paper on type computations and meta-programming with Ur, and Michael Emmi's Parameterized Verification of Transactional Memories) are also cool.

This year they reduced talk length to 15 minutes (instead of 20), which people seemed to have strong thoughts about. The general consensus seemed to be that people appreciated having the time limit for others' talks, as people who worked hard on their talks would take the effort to make a good 15-minute talk, and the short length kept people awake and even enticed people to attend talks on areas of marginal interest. People generally seemed unhappy/concerned about the shortened time for their own talk. Also, someone commented that having shorter talks made them more intense and left less (perhaps necessary) time for zoning out.

This year there was no PLDI-wide outing, but having everyone staying in a huge hotel (Fairmont Royal York) with its own bar, restaurants, shops, etc. promoted PLDI-wide unity. There were also many restaurants and tourist attractions within walking distance, which made it easy to embark on food and other excursions with fellow PLDI-ers. Being by the waterfront was also nice: Tom Ball led a running contingent along the waterfront path every morning at 7am. Before and after the conference, I managed to do a fair amount of sight-seeing: pictures here. (Toronto is huge and has so many interesting neighborhoods! I loved Kensington Market and Old Cabbagetown. Toronto also apparently has multiple Sri Lankan restaurants!)

This was a big conference for me because not only did I give my first conference talk, but my paper with my MSR mentor Chris Hawblitzel (Safe to the Last Instruction: Automated Verification of a Type-Safe Operating System) won the best paper award!

Talk slides below:

PLDI 2010: Safe to the Last Instruction

View more presentations from jxyz.

Articles about Women and the Workplace

2010-06-12T13:40:00.000-07:00

One week away and I've collected so many articles about women in my inbox!

Women in Science

Gender stop-gaps - a Nature article about the under-representation of women in academic science and the measures being taken/advised to address it, including growing the applicant pool, providing a more family-friendly environment, and increasing mentoring. This article also cites organizational changes as important: for instance, a researcher noticed that in smaller biotech startups with flat organization structures, women were as likely as men to hold a patent, while at universities and larger companies men patented significantly more.
NCWIT Report Examines Women's Declining Participating in Tech - a blog post describing a report about the attrition of women in IT careers compared to the past and compared to the numbers of women who pursue tech-related fields in college. The report also describes barriers to participation and how to address them, recommending an "ecosystem of reform."
Daring to Discuss Women's Potential in Science - a New York Times article about a proposed law that would require the White House science adviser to oversee workshops promoting gender equity. In this piece Tierney raises the question of whether bias exists. This point is not the most relevant to raise, as the existence of differences does not invalidate the need for equity. Rather, learning about differences can educate us about how to provide equal opportunities and make progress in a way that allows people with different cultural backgrounds and strengths to contribute. This Jezebel post makes some good criticisms of the article.

More general

Dressed to Distract - New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd discusses the firing of Debrahlee Lorezana from Citigroup, for the reason that her looks and dress were "too distracting" for her male coworkers and supervisors. Dowd points out that while this is usually the other way around (beautiful people get what they want), women are often punished professionally for being too beautiful. Dowd writes, "A male friend once told me he was looking for an unattractive personal assistant so he wouldn’t be tempted. And when I was hiring a Grace Kelly blonde as a researcher a few years ago, a male colleague asked me not to because it would be 'too distracting' to him; two girlfriends cautioned me not to because it would be depressing... for me to work with someone so good looking."
In Sweden, the Men Can Have It All - a New York Times pieces about gender equity in Sweden, where women have equal rights at work and men have equal rights at home--85% of Swedish men take parental leave. This is part of the women around the world series.
A short history of "feminist" anti-feminists - a nice Slate piece about "the early sisters of Sarah Palin," women who claim to be feminists but organize in opposition to the feminist movement. And (yes!) the article cites Camille Paglia ("I'm not soft and silly like all the other women") as the "iconic leader" of a group of contemporary anti-feminists including Christina Hoff-Summers ("why can't a woman be more like a man?").

Reviewing resolutions: time and technology

2010-05-23T20:50:00.000-07:00

Earlier I wrote about my New Year's resolutions regarding time and technology. Since we're halfway through the year, it's time to evaluate how we're* doing.

While I have improved at spending time the way I want to, I need to be more honest about how much time actually exists. Being more honest with myself about how much I slack off/am capable of working has helped me to do more things I enjoy. This past spring I have taken up acrobatics, gotten involved with Graduate Women at MIT, been meeting new people, going to shows, etc. without taking a terrible productivity hit. A problem is that I often do too many things I enjoy, making it difficult to appreciate each thing (and to get enough sleep). My friend Geneva linked me to a Zen Habits blog post about slowing down and enjoying life more: I plan to take its advice about doing things more slowly and mindfully. I would like to arrive at an equilibrium where I am doing what I want and I am not rushing through life.

As the increase in my non-work activity has increased my volume of e-mail and phone communication, improving my relationship with technology requires more drastic measures. My goal is to limit my electronic communication and internet use to activities that enhance my experience of the physical world. Compartmentalization will be important in reaching this goal: separating productive use of technology (writing e-mails to friends, reading informative media pieces, etc.) from unproductive use (browsing online sales instead of going to bed) and separating time for engaging with technology from time for engaging strictly with the physical world. To get into the habit of interacting with the physical world I plan to have explicit, contiguous "off-grid" blocks of time when I don't use my phone or the internet: I am going to start with one hour each weeknight and five hours (at once, but either day) each weekend. I would like to reach a point where I can leave my phone and computer for extended periods of time without causing anyone (including myself) anxiety and where checking e-mail/Facebook is not the first thing I do every morning.

Here's to slowing down and enjoying life in the rest of 2010. :)

* Yes, editorial "we" again. ;)

CRA-W Grad Cohort 2010

2010-05-04T20:59:00.000-07:00

April 22-24 I was in Seattle for the Computing Research Association's Grad Cohort for Women. For the last ten years, the CRA has annually been sponsoring graduate women in computer science in their first through third years from across US and Canadian institutions to convene.

Initially skeptical of women-only conferences ("I don't need a special conference to network and discuss research"), I signed up for this upon my friend Oshani's recommendation. CRA-W Grad Cohort turned out to be a highly positive experience. One of the senior women sums it up well in an explanation to a male colleague: "Imagine if you went to work every day and there were only women. Imagine if you went to a conference, excited to discuss your research ideas, and there were only women around. Wouldn't you be excited to encounter another man?"

The program was informative and thought-provoking: there were helpful sessions and panels on topics such as presentation skills and interdisciplinary research. There was also a session on touchier subjects such as how to deal with small-scale harassment and how to identify and handle bias. Additionally, there was a poster session where the second-years presented their research. The program also made good use of the meal times to allow graduate women to network with other women (graduate students and professors) in the same area and at the same point of the academic progression.

It was incredible to be surrounded by and discuss research with so many women in computer science. (It was also somewhat overwhelming because I had never imagined there to be so many women in CS!) The dance party that took place the evening of the first day was also one of my most fun activities in recent times. I highly recommend attending this meeting*!

* There is also the Grace Hopper Celebration for women in CS in the fall.

Revival of MIT's PL offsite tradition

2010-04-25T19:43:00.001-07:00

Upon Prof. Saman Amarasinghe's (persistent) suggestion, I organized (with some other kids) an MIT programming languages/software engineering off-site with six PL-related groups. Each group had 30 minutes to present their work. There were two professors panels, one on research advice and one on the future of MIT programming languages research.

The goals of the off-site, as state on our website, were to "discuss the current and future directions of MIT's PL research." The event was surprisingly productive in terms of getting everyone up to speed on what different groups were working on and in terms of discussing what students and professors should do to improve the research experience at MIT.

During the research advice panel, one professor gave four pieces of advice: 1) learn, 2) teach, 3) do slow research, and 4) have an attitude. The third point sparked quite a bit of controversy among the other professors, most of whom argued that computer science research is inherently fast-paced and thus our research practices should adapt to accomodate the pace. Another interesting thing was that most professors seemed to agree that the current peer-reviewed conference model is not the best model for how PL research should work, but there was not consensus on how it should be done.

During the future of MIT PL research panel discussion, there was some interesting discussion not just about what the future of PL entailed, but how much of the present and past to retain. (A big question was the degree to which it is important to teach type theory to MIT students and, given nobody at MIT does type theory research, what the best way of doing that would be.)

A result of the off-site was the goal to stay more connected throughout the year. I would be curious to hear how other schools' programming languages groups sync up to discuss ideas and learn new concepts.

Oh, and if you don't believe this actually happened--there are some nice photos here with a group shot here.

Grad Women @ MIT Keynote: The Evolution of Bias

2010-04-25T09:58:00.000-07:00

I'm excited for Dr. Freada Klein's keynote talk for the Graduate Women at MIT spring kick-off. Description of the talk, "The Evolution of Bias," is as follows:

Though women have been a part of the work force for decades, they still face bias, implicit and explicit, in the workplace. Freada will describe how these biases have changed as a result of research and policy over the years, focusing on the most recent research on implicit biases.

There will be refreshments and an opportunity for mingling and discussion following Freada's talk.

The talk will be 5:30-6:30 (with reception following) in 46-3002.

Freada's husband Mitch Kapor is tweeting to advertise the talk.

C/C++ course on MIT's OCW

2010-04-23T17:46:00.000-07:00

Eunsuk Kang and I taught a C/C++ course for undergraduates during MIT's 2010 Independent Activities Period. The course description is as follows:

Ever hang your head in shame after your Python program wasn't as fast as your friend's C program? Ever wish you could use objects without having to use Java? Join us for this fun introduction to C and C++! We will take you through a tour that will start with writing simple C programs, go deep into the caves of C memory manipulation, resurface with an introduction to using C++ classes, dive deeper into advanced C++ class use and the C++ Standard Template Libraries. We'll wrap up by teaching you some tricks of the trade that you may need for tech interviews.

We see this as a "C/C++ empowerment" course: we want you to come away understanding

why you would want to use C over another language (control over memory, probably for performance reasons),
why you would want to use C++ rather than C (objects), and
how to be useful in C and C++.

The materials are now online on MIT's Open Courseware.

The gender gap in Silicon Valley

2010-04-18T21:43:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Clarissa for sending this.

A recent NY Times article Why So Few Women in Silicon Valley discusses the (sometimes surprisingly overt) sexism and other factors that are responsible for women creating only 8% of venture-backed start-ups and being 6% of the chief executives at the top 100 tech companies.

Fryer-Levitt math gender gap study

2010-04-18T20:57:00.001-07:00

Thanks to Jie Tang for sending this.

Economists Roland Fryer and Steven Levitt have a 2009 study, "An Empirical Analysis of the Gender Gap in Mathematics," in which they analyze the gender gap in the US, explore causes, and discuss cross-country data which shows that countries with same-sex schooling don't have this gap. Paper here; abstract excerpt below:

We document and analyze the emergence of a substantial gender gap in mathematics in the early years of schooling... in the United States. There are no mean differences between boys and girls upon entry to school, but girls lose more than two-tenths of a standard deviation relative to boys over the first six years of school... We explore a wide range of possible explanations in the U.S. data, including less investment by girls in math, low parental expectations, and biased tests, but find little support for any of these theories... The cross-country data reveal that girls do not lag boys in math in countries with same-sex schooling, raising an intriguing question as to whether this relationship is causal.

I am not surprised. Since traditional gender roles are so ingrained in our consciousness, it is natural that young men and women would look to them in determining acceptable behavior*. Having young women hold back in math causes a feedback loop that makes it increasingly difficult for young women to develop their mathematical ability: as fewer women become good at math, 1) people become less accustomed to seeing women who are good at math, making it difficult for women to proves themselves w.r.t. math and 2) women with mathematical talent are less likely to develop it, since they are not expecting to be good.

These findings corroborate the hypothesis that the US gender gap in math is largely due to cultural factors. (See my other link.) They also fit with my personal experiences: one of the biggest social challenges I faced in leaving my all-girls high school for a coed college environment was having people treat me like I shouldn't know what I'm doing when it comes to math. This was not only frustrating but also harmful to my self-confidence--it probably caused some amount of deadweight loss in my mathematical development.

Shifting current gender roles could go a long way in bridging the gender gap.

* I am curious to see studies analyzing how other traits associated with masculinity (physical strength, debate ability) fare under an analogous analysis.

The Evelyn duo

2010-04-18T13:13:00.000-07:00

Amanda Palmer's latest musical project is Evelyn Evelyn, a fictional singing conjoined twin duo Evelyn and Evelyn Neville created with Jason Webley. Evelyn Evelyn's eponymous album is brilliant and hilarious, featuring songs like "Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn" and "Love Will Tear Us Apart." The genre is neo-cabaret/circus/jazz/other. Wired reviews the album positively here.

I didn't get to see them at the Oberon this past week, but they'll be playing at the House of Blues in Boston June 19.

To provide another perspective, I am compelled to link to this blog post regarding the ableist issues with Palmer's and Webley's representation of conjoined twins.

Gender imbalance among Harvard's CS undergrads

2010-04-18T13:08:00.001-07:00

I was recently interviewed for this Harvard Crimson article about the dearth of female undergraduates concentrating in computer science at Harvard. While the article misrepresents some details about me, it gets it right that a large factor in the skewed ratio is the male dominance in terms of both numbers and culture (which manifests in things like problem set groups).

Safe to the Last Instruction

2010-03-30T20:50:00.000-07:00

Chris Hawblitzel and I just submitted the camera-ready version of our PLDI 2010 paper Safe to the Last Instruction: Automated Verification of a Type-Safe Operating System.

The main idea is as follows. Much of traditional operating systems verification is quite difficult because the projects verify properties of low-level code. Microsoft's Singularity project aims to make the verification process easier by verifying an operating system written in a higher-level, type-safe language (C#) that provides memory safety properties for free. The problem here is that OS's necessarily have low-level code--for instance, context-switching code involves moving the stack pointer. We propose a verification approach that involves designing the OS around a small low-level "Nucleus" that we verify using Hoare logic, verifying the interface between the Nucleus and higher-level, type-safe code, and writing the rest of the OS using the higher-level language. We describe Verve, a prototype OS verified automatically end-to-end for type safety.

Abstract below; paper here:

Typed assembly language (TAL) and Hoare logic can verify the absence of many kinds of errors in low-level code.We use TAL and Hoare logic to achieve highly automated, static verification of the safety of a new operating system called Verve. Our techniques and tools mechanically verify the safety of every assembly language instruction in the operating system, run-time system, drivers, and applications (in fact, every part of the system software except the boot loader). Verve consists of a “Nucleus” that provides primitive access to hardware and memory, a kernel that builds services on top of the Nucleus, and applications that run on top of the kernel. The Nucleus, written in verified assembly language, implements allocation, garbage collection, multiple stacks, interrupt handling, and device access. The kernel, written in C# and compiled to TAL, builds higher-level services, such as preemptive threads, on top of the Nucleus. A TAL checker verifies the safety of the kernel and applications. A Hoare-style verifier with an automated theorem prover verifies both the safety and correctness of the Nucleus. Verve is, to the best of our knowledge, the first operating system mechanically verified to guarantee both type and memory safety. More generally, Verve’s approach demonstrates a practical way to mix high-level typed code with low-level untyped code in a verifiably safe manner.

Chatroulette!

2010-03-28T20:08:00.000-07:00

In the last couple of weeks I've spent a bit of time on Chatroulette, a site where you can video chat with random strangers in sequence, moving on to each next chat by clicking "Next." Here is a great video explaining how it works. Jon Stewart has a hilarious piece about it as well.

Alice in Wonderland movie

2010-03-07T20:37:00.000-08:00

Friday I saw the Disney's Alice in Wonderland movie in 3D. It was a spin on the original Alice in Wonderland in which Alice returns to Wonderland as a young woman. I thought Helena Bonhan Carter and Johnny Depp were great in their respective roles as Red Queen and the Mad Hatter. The set and effects were also fantastic, as expected.

Bold Sell public speaking competition

2010-03-04T18:40:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I attended the finals of the Bold Sell Competition, where contestants have to pitch a product they've never seen before using 6 slides they see as the audience sees them. (The organized has a blog post about this here.) This year's competition, a collaboration between the MIT Sloan Sales Club and the Harvard Business School Public Speaking Club, was completely hilarious. Contestants had to sell products from sinus-cleaning snakes to human-powered transport balls with all kinds of wacky target markets (a young Bill Gates sitting by CRT running an early version of Microsoft; a jail-bound Martha Stewart), revenue models, marketing teams (male dancers wearing only shiny lame shorts), competitive advantages (http://xkcd.com/210/), and descriptions of the competition. Below I include the video of the first place winner from this year; there are more videos here. There is a video of last year's winner here.

Desk in the closet

2010-03-02T04:17:00.001-08:00

Thanks to my college roommate Aliza for sending me this. As Aliza says, I was about six years ahead of the trend by having my desk in the closet of our "study room"* freshman year. Also of note is the fact that freshman year of college was six years ago...

* That's a whole suite of stories in itself.

My first aerial acrobatics class!

2010-03-01T19:43:00.001-08:00

Sunday I had my first aerial acrobatics class at Aircraft Aerial Arts* with Jill Maio. It was so much fun! The class consisted of three women (including me) who had never been on the equipment (corde lisse, aerial silk, and static trapeze) before. Jill (patiently) taught us basic skills such as how to climb the ropes, how to pose on the silks, how to go upside-down, and how to do seated and standing poses on the trapeze. I was able to do much more than I had expected--and it wasn't scary at all! I signed up for a 7-class introductory series this March through April. Cirque du Soleil, here I come!

* This place is really convenient--it is a 5-minute walk from Inman.

A.R.T.'s Donkey Show

2010-03-01T19:25:00.000-08:00

Saturday I went to the American Repertory Theater's Donkey Show, which "tells the story of A Midsummer Night's Dream through the great 70s anthems." My friend Firth accurately describes it as "just kind of a big party." The show takes place at the Oberon, which has a stage in front of a large open dance floor area. There are raised platforms where audience members can rise to dance with glitter-covered "fairies" before the show. The show happens not just on the stage, but on the catwalk around the club and on the raised platforms as the audience dances to retro disco hits such as "We are Family" and "Ring My Bell" around the performance. After the show (at least, the 10:30 show) the DJ keeps the glitter-covered audience dancing for another hour before they kick everyone out. If you go, I recommend dressing 70's disco! (And I definitely recommend going!)

I posted pictures here.

Aircraft launch: aerial acrobatics in Boston

2010-02-19T20:48:00.000-08:00

Tonight I went to the Aircraft launch, the opening party for Aircraft Aerial Arts, a new aerial acrobatics school in Somerville*.

The party was (and the studio is) in this cool space in a garage on Webster Ave. in Somerville. There was a silks apparatus, a hoop, and a static trapeze hanging from the ceiling and then space around to watch. Through the course of the night there were various performances, including one performance by owner Jill Maio in the back room with an extra-high silks apparatus. Jill also did this awesome maneuver where she took down the silks apparatus and hung up a cord lisse by climbing up the silks, hooking up the cord lisse, and switching over.

In between the performances people drank wine and hung out. It was an interesting scene--the studio was filled with people from the Boston circus/acrobatics community and other random curious people (like me). I was told that Boston has quite a strong and growing circus/acro community.

Thanks to Ben Reynolds for telling me about this event!

* I am really excited about taking up aerial acrobatics! I signed up for a silks class next weekend. Thanks, Amy Cohen, for telling me about all these cool circus things. :)

Computer engineer Barbie

2010-02-12T20:56:00.000-08:00

My friend Rishabh's dreams have come true. Computer engineer Barbie is here by popular vote. Mattel even worked with the Society of Women Engineers to make sure that she is wearing the appropriate "geek chic" attire. Bravo, Barbie.

Graduate Women at MIT gets some press

2010-02-12T20:25:00.000-08:00

I have been involved in starting Graduate Women at MIT, an institute-wide women's group. We got some press in the MIT Tech today, which provides an exciting start to our kick-off spring.

Classy Asian Ladies

2010-02-08T20:11:00.000-08:00

From Eugene.

If you are a single white man who loves Asian ladies, ClassyAsianLadies.com, an "Exclusive Upscale Online Dating Service," is what you need. The site boasts:

Our beautiful Asian ladies all live in the US already. They will not try to marry you to get a “green card” or to become financially dependent upon you.

In the "Why Asian Women" section, the site says:

It seems that in today’s society the average woman is becoming very competitive and even a bit more masculine than their counterparts in earlier generations. All the while it seems to be just the opposite is taking place for Asian women who tend to retain their sense of femininity and well-known cultural attitude of gentle and caring support.

On one hand, such a thing seems racist, sexist, and wrong. On the other hand, this may provide an efficient way for "classy Asian ladies" to find the "high quality, sincere gentlemen" they've been looking for*. Thea Lim has a nice Racialicious post makes a good argument for the former**: that this site perpetuates oppressive stereotypes of Asian women and encourages the sexual solipsism of white males seeking the ideal submissive mate.

* Like the controversial Ashley Madison, a dating site for married people--"have an affair, guaranteed!"
** I don't agree with Lim that homogenizing a race of people is bad a priori.

BOC presents A Little Night Music

2010-02-07T19:11:00.001-08:00

The other day I saw Boston Opera Collective's performance of Sondheim's musical A Little Night Music at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. It was fun--some actors, such as the Stephanie Piraino, who plays Anne Egerman, were quite good. I recommend going, especially if you are a student. (Tickets are $15 for students and $25 for non-students. It is showing again next weekend.)

Misogynists are women, too

2010-02-03T17:50:00.000-08:00

Being a woman and identifying as a feminist does not mean that I am not a misogynist. Ever since I read Rachel Simmons's Odd Girl out and Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs, I have been thinking the silent prevalence of female misogyny and about my own misogynistic tendencies. By misogyny, I mean judging women by harsher standards than those used for judging men.

While it is easy to identify blatant cases of misogyny, it is difficult to recognize misogyny that echoes society's views and/or reaffirms what people often want to think. More obvious cases of misogyny in society are public figures like Camille Paglia, a self-proclaimed feminist who has said things like "Women are forever softening, censoring, politicizing." There are also the women who adopt society's language for oppressing women, denouncing other women as "sluts" and "whores." Then there are the women who don't trust the abilities of other women before they prove themselves, who don't think women have the same baseline ability as men, who enjoy being "not like the other women," and who get annoyed with some women for being so bubbly and so... girly. (Don't they know they should act more like men?) I used to be this kind of woman.

There are many reasons why women have misogynistic tendencies. Many women in our society grow up internalizing misogynistic values, so it is to be expected that these values will be reflected in attitudes towards other women. There is also the element, which Rachel Simmons describes, of the oppressed oppressing based on the same criteria. It is also easier for women--or anyone--to believe that they are somehow different and special rather than accept society is unfair, and in particular unfair to people like them.

Like everyone, misogynists can change. The first step is to recognize misogynistic tendencies--the most pernicious behaviors are those that you don't know about. Before writing off a woman as a bitch or whore, it may be good to ask what factors influenced you to see the woman that way. When you meet a woman, be conscious of how you are judging her and recognize how much you are expecting her to prove herself. How does this compare to when you meet men? Do you dismiss women for being incompetent, a bitch, or a slut? Awareness can go a long way in changing behaviors.

Women need to recognize female misogyny so they can improve the way men see women and the way they see themselves. Men and women need to recognize that female misogyny occurs not because women are petty, irrational, or unworthy of respect, but because of much more complex factors. It is everyone's duty to call out misogyny whenever they can, even (and perhaps) especially when it is exhibited by women--even if it may be a sensitive subject.

* This issue has been addressed by works such as Rachel Simmons's 2003 book Odd Girl Out and the 2004 movie Mean Girls.

Women and sex: upcoming film screenings of interest

2010-01-27T20:39:00.000-08:00

MIT's Women and Gender Studies has some cool upcoming film screenings, with discussion afterward:

The Price of Pleasure: Pornography, Sexuality, and Relationships (Monday, 2/1 7pm in 6-120) by the Media Education Foundation.
Subjectified: Nine Young Women Talk About Sex (Thursday, 2/4 7pm in 6-120) by Melissa Tapper Goldman.

The Facebook generation is getting a little bit married

2010-01-27T19:55:00.000-08:00

Upon Feministing's recommendation, I read Hannah Seligson's A Little Bit Married, a book about the phenomenon of today's 20-somethings moving into long-term relationships with cohabitation without marriage in sight. I had picked up this book hoping to better understand questions like what it means to live together, how and when to get out of cohabitation situations, and how to make decisions based on a significant other you're not married to. This book was quite educational with respect to each of these questions.

Seligson writes that along with the courting phenomena of the hook-up and the college marriage is "a little bit married," there is the situation where a couple will be practically married (cohabitating, sharing vacations, sharing family holidays, sharing pets, etc.) for several years without being actually married. These relationships may end in marriage, but they may also end with one person getting a new job and moving away. Seligson states a few reasons for this phenomenon. The biggest seems to be that the twenties have become the "Odyssey years"--people tend to go through several jobs and travel before they settle down in their thirties. Because people are hesitant to settle down and commit before they have "made it" career-wise/financially, there is now this extra 10-year period where people are looking for companionship and ultimately a life partner but this may not be the biggest priority. Seligson calls us the "Facebook generation"--people used to a certain amount of physical isolation, connected through social networks, and used to getting what we want (and hence picky about partners). According to Seligson, to be married in your twenties now puts you in the minority and people of our generation will probably be in several long-term relationships before marrying.

There are many questions that arise in an "a little bit married" (ALBM) situation. (While the cover of the book suggests that it is about how to get the guy to propose to you, this is not the case!) Besides describing "case studies" in ALBM, Seligson discusses how to navigate career commitments and relationships with the significant other's family, how to decide whether to live together, how to negotiate the logistics of living together, how to decide whether to break up, how to break up (when you live together), how to move things along if you want to know where it's going, how to decide whether to get married, and how to view compromise/sacrifice in relationships. She also gives some thoughts on how women can balance the competing forces of "I can't let marriage get in the way of having a career" and "my eggs are drying up." Since most of these issues were not relevant to people who I know of my parents' generation and I haven't had enough friends my age go through this kind of thing, this book gives the best advice I've seen about these sorts of things.

I highly recommend this book, especially to people who are a little bit married (which many of my college friends now are) and to people at transitional stages in their lives (ahem, college seniors) trying to figure out how much to base their decisions on the decisions of their significant others. This book provides a lot of the perspective I haven't gotten from peers and people of the older generation.

Why a woman can't be more like a man

2010-01-27T19:35:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Margo for sending me this article last week.

In response to Clay Shirky's "A Rant About Women," Kate Harding wrote this piece answering the question of why a woman can't be more like a man. The "manly" qualities they are talking about here (loosely) are confidence/arrogance, stubborness, and ruthless ambition.

Clay Shirky writes, "...it would be good if more women see interesting opportunities that they might not be qualified for, opportunities which they might in fact fuck up if they try to take them on, and then try to take them on."

Kate Harding's response is that 1) women are often punished for acting like men (they are considered frigid bitches and still not given recognition), since everyone expects them to act like women and 2) it shouldn't have to be the case that women have to act "like men" to succeed. She writes, "So no it's not like I think Shirky's giving out bad advice here... I want a better world for women who don't have a 'screw you' streak a mile wide, too. The other part, the much greater part, involves recognizing what happens to women who 'act like men' -- i.e., who act like they deserve respect, fair pay and acclaim for good work -- and calling it out until it stops."

For most of my life I've received advice along the lines of what Clay Shirky says and I haven't thought much about Harding's argument, but Harding makes good points that are worth thinking about.

That's Why I Chose Yale: the mini-musical

2010-01-27T19:33:00.000-08:00

This Yale admissions video is a must-watch*. It is so well done.

* I rarely watch random videos and only watched this one after multiple people sent me the link.

Next Barbie: computer engineer

2010-01-19T18:03:00.000-08:00

I'm really amused by this Barbie vote for the next Barbie: will she be an environmentalist, surgeon, architect, news anchor, or computer engineer? It's especially amusing(/terrible) is that Barbie seems to adopt a new career only every few years.

Some songs I like

2010-01-18T20:12:00.000-08:00

It has been noted that I don't really discuss my music preferences*. Below are ten songs I'm really into right now:

Dresden Dolls, "Mandy Goes to Med School"
Tom Waits, "Tango Till They're Sore"
Iggy Pop, "King of the Dogs" (fantastic video)
Amanda Palmer, "Oasis" (great video)
The Bird and the Bee, "Man"
Jesca Hoop, "Silverscreen"
Jill Tracy, "Evil Night Together"
Tom Waits, "Jockey Full of Bourbon"
The Bird and the Bee, "Polite Dance Song" (amazing video)
Alice Smith, "Woodstock"

Side note: I want to learn improvisational jazz on piano. I would consider myself to be an intermediate pianist. (I previously played for 10+ years but haven't really played for the last six...) Any advice?

* This might have started in college when my roommates made fun of me for listening to a lot 90's music (Everclear, Third Eye Blind, and gangsta rap)...

On collaboration

2010-01-14T18:31:00.001-08:00

A friend told me that she was thinking about getting a power couple to mentor her and her boyfriend as a couple. She said that people call her and her boyfriend a power couple because both of them are graduate students with ambitious career plans, and that the fact that both of them are so ambitious worries her because it's difficult to negotiate compromise and determine which fights to pick. This got me thinking about how there is little guidance to have the impressive, synergistic net horizontal* collaborations like these couples have.

I have been thinking about the issue of horizontal collaboration quite a bit in an academic context. While I have gotten advice about how to succeed as an individual and how to navigate the vertical advisor-student relationship, I've gotten significantly less guidance about how to handle situations where there are non-binding commitments between equals. I have been given little guidance about 1) finding someone I can work well with, 2) negotiating a set of goals, 3) negotiating interfaces for working, and 4) actually working with the person (communicating with the appropriate frequency/via the appropriate media, negotiating power and respect, compromising rather than withdrawing--and getting the other person to do the same, etc.)**. I am not even sure if this is the appropriate set of questions to be asking.

There are various reasons why I think people don't tend to give advice about how to enter into successful collaborations. First of all, the degree to which people are good at/enjoy working with others is often accepted as a personality trait that isn't likely to change. Secondly, many people have this ideal of the "lone genius" and believe that smart people do not need to work together. (When I told a professor that I wanted to work on my horizontal collaboration skills, he said I didn't need them because the best people work alone or with their students.) People also have a belief that people who don't work well with others don't desire to work with others. Yet another thing is that in many aspects of life, people don't get to choose who they work with, so understanding how to choose people you work well with and how to work with them isn't the most useful skill to have.

When I told a professor from undergrad about my desire to improve at peer collaboration, she suggested that I approach a peer and do a project in the intersection of our interests. Following her advice, I propositioned my officemate to enter not only into a collaboration (on a programming languages topic in the intersection of our interests, specifics to be decided) but also a meta-collaboration about how our collaboration is going. So far we have collaborated on better understanding the components of collaboration (the spectrum from horizontal to vertical, the size of the interface). Collaborate, collaborating, collaboration, collate***. I will let you know how this goes--I think these lessons will apply to life in general.

Thoughts?

* I refer to vertical relationships as ones with clearly unequal power balance and horizontal ones where the power is equal and neither person's interests or goals subsumes the others.
** I think these things apply to romantic relationships as well.
*** One of these is not like the others.

2010 New Year's Resolutions

2010-01-10T17:39:00.001-08:00

Given that we're over a week into 2010, it's time I committed to some resolutions. In Influence, Cialdini says that the way to do something you want to do is to commit to it publicly, so here goes.

I have the following two resolutions:

Change how I interact with technology so that it's enhancing my quality of life rather than distracting me from reality. While the things like my phone and the internet (e-mail, Facebook, and Google Reader) are good for connecting me with people and keeping me up to date on current events, I'd like to figure out how much is too much and get rid of everything superfluous. For instance, while Facebook is great for letting me know what friends I haven't seen since high school are doing, it's bad if I'm spending the afternoon Facebook stalking rather than having face-to-face contact. Also, reading random junk mail about EMS sales is about as unproductive and as unrelaxing as watching TV commercials. My friend Chenxing recommended that I look at zenhabits.net and gave some other suggestions about reducing junk mail, opting out of credit card offers, etc. So far, I've unsubscribed from 20-30 mailing lists and have set up filters on my e-mail inbox so that there are fewer distractions.
Change things so that how I spend my time reflects what I value. At this point in my life, 1) what I'm "too busy" for reflects my own lifestyle choices rather than anything that's been imposed on me and 2) I'm not actually "too busy" for a lot of things. I've been learning that my being "too busy" is self-imposed barrier to having more fun that results from guilt about not working as much as I could and from living in a culture where how busy you are reflects how cool you are. In the coming year, I want to be more honest with myself about how I spend my time and how I want to spend my time. I will work on recognizing the that I (usually) have time for 1) seeing friends, 2) doing fun things (such as attending fun talks and taking up rugby), 3) reading blogs and news, 4) sleeping, and 5) doing things for other people.

A Girl's Life

2010-01-10T10:09:00.000-08:00

Rachel Simmons has a documentary A Girl's Life (streaming free online) that talks about the body image, social interaction, and other issues that 21st century adolescent girls face. Simmons discusses media pressure on girls and how it affects girls' self image, how technology affects the way girls interact (addictive texting, cyber-bullying), girl-on-girl physical aggression, and how single-sex education can benefit girls.

Though I have my usual issue with Simmons's work that she doesn't provide insight into why the situation is so precarious for girls, this video is interesting and information and provides an accurate portrayal of certain facets of adolescent life for teenage girls.

I am glad that my all-girls middle/high school took care to discuss these sorts of issues. For instance, we had someone come talk about her doctoral dissertation on the distortion of the female body in the media, from the sexualization of Ariel in The Little Mermaid to editing of magazine model photos. What was the experience of people who did not go to all-girls schools with respect to this kind of thing?

* This presentation, by the way, was met with a good amount of hostility and suspicion by middle school girls struggling to socialize themselves into a world with these media-created standards.

How to have more sex with Richard Wiseman

2010-01-10T06:41:00.000-08:00

Friday I went to How to have more sex with Richard Wiseman*, part of Richard Wiseman's book tour promoting 59 seconds, his new book busting myths from self-help books and providing tips and tricks based on psychology and other research. According to his Amazon biography, he has done research in "offbeat areas of psychology, including deception, humor, and luck" and is a "passionate advocated for science." He talked about things like magic tricks and how they take advantage of psychology, optical and aural illusions that take advantage of perception, and his experiences debunking myths of the paranormal (for instance, fire-walking). He showed us a few of his videos, including the amazing color changing card trick.

* It took me a while to realize that the talk title was based on talk titles that parse "How to have more sex, with Richard Wiseman."

When to buy

2010-01-10T06:36:00.000-08:00

I came across this helpful blog post about when to buy things. Some highlights:

Airline tickets—For domestic nonholiday travel, look for the lowest fares 21 days from your departure. Fares are updated at 10 a.m., 12:30 p.m., and 8 p.m. on weekdays, and airlines file one update on Saturday and Sunday. Lowest fares are filed on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and occasionally on Saturdays. Wednesday is generally the cheapest day to fly and Sunday the most expensive. (Exception: the Wednesday before Thanksgiving—the busiest travel day of the year.) For holiday travel, start looking in September to get a good price. Fares can change quickly, and much depends on the carrier and the market.
Coupons—While coupons are available throughout the year, the most coupons appear in the Sunday paper during November and December. The best deals on turkeys can be found two weeks before Thanksgiving to Christmas. In spring, you’ll find coupons on seasonal produce, ham, and frozen food (apparently March is National Frozen Food Month—who knew?). Summer coupons offer discounts on grilling items and ice cream. Autumn brings coupons on soup and other canned items.
Champagne—With steep competition to be your New Year’s Eve bubbly, Champagne houses drop prices during the holidays.

Lawsuit against Dahn Yoga

2010-01-05T19:12:00.000-08:00

My friend Arun pointed me to this article about a lawsuit against Dahn Yoga calling it a "totalistic, high-demand cult group." See my previous blog post about Dahn Yoga here.

Is Food the New Sex?

2010-01-01T18:05:00.000-08:00

In his Sidney awards II, David Brooks recommends Mary Eberstadt's article Is Food the New Sex?, which makes the observation that while people have become increasingly unprincipled about sex, they have become increasingly principled about food. Eberstadt says that the people who have become moralistic and evangelizing when it comes to food tend to be the same people with liberal views about sex:

In the end, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the rules being drawn around food receive some force from the fact that people are uncomfortable with how far the sexual revolution has gone — and not knowing what to do about it, they turn for increasing consolation to mining morality out of what they eat.

Eberstadt says that the emotional harm that free sex has caused may cause people to redevelop morals about sex, saying "where mindless food is today, mindless sex — in light of the growing empirical record of its own unleashing — may yet again be tomorrow."

While the tone is somewhat moralizing and conservative when it comes to issues of sex*, I recommend reading this piece. The parallels Eberhadt draws between moralizing about food and sex are interesting and apt. While I disagree with the way Eberhadt frames views on food/sex in terms of morals, her characterization of morals as subject to trends is though-provoking.

* The piece is written from a fairly moralistic point of view in general.

The Cultural Significance of Free Software

2009-12-29T07:35:00.000-08:00

Lambda the Ultimate informs me that you can read Christopher Kelty's book Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software online. I haven't read this but would like to better understand the implications of free software, so this is on the list. I found it interesting that the public can use this book as they can free software by modulating it.

Readers by Author

2009-12-27T19:10:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Neha for sharing this fun post on Readers by Author via kottke.org. Some highlights:

Ayn Rand: Workaholics seeking validation.
James Joyce: People who do not like John Cusack movies.
Richard Dawkins: People who have their significant other grab them under the table in order to shut them up whenever someone else at a dinner says something absolutely ridiculous and wrong.

If you judge me by my favorite author according to this, I am a female high school French teacher who has my masters' degree. ;)

Trial by Fire: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

2009-12-27T08:41:00.001-08:00

Another one of David Brooks's recommended essays of the year, David Grann's "Trial by Fire" is a masterful piece of journalism about how law failed Cameron Todd Willingham, who was most likely wrongfully executed for arson in the fire that killed his three daughters.

In Brooks's words, "Grann painstakingly describes how bogus science may have swayed the system to kill an innocent man, but at the core of the piece there are the complex relationships that grew up around a man convicted of burning his children. If you can still support the death penalty after reading this piece, you have stronger convictions than I do."

Stuff Asian People Like

2009-12-26T20:07:00.000-08:00

I recently discovered this blog on what Asian people like, similar to the popular blog Stuff White People Like*. Among my favorites are #38 White Guys and #63 Squatting**.

* Stuff White People Like has been around since January 2008; Stuff Asian People Like started February 2008.
** It's probably not what you think it is--unless you are Asian.

How to get into grad school and stay there

2009-12-26T20:04:00.000-08:00

Harvard computer science professor Matt Welsh has two useful blog posts, How to get into grad school and How to get your papers accepted.

David Brooks's recommended health care essays

2009-12-26T19:24:00.000-08:00

David Brooks gives out annual Sidney awards to the best magazine essays*. The essays about health care are quite good:

Atul Gawande's "The Cost Conundrum", the most influential essay of 2009, investigates why McAllen, TX is one of the most expensive health-care markets in the country. Gawande writes, "When it comes to making care better and cheaper, changing who pays the doctor will make no more difference than changing who pays the electrician. The lesson of the high-quality, low-cost communities is that someone has to be accountable for the totality of care. Otherwise, you get a system that has no brakes. You get McAllen." He says, "We will need to do in-depth research on what makes the best systems successful—the peer-review committees? recruiting more primary-care doctors and nurses? putting doctors on salary?—and disseminate what we learn... we... need to fund research that compares the effectiveness of different systems of care—to reduce our uncertainty about which systems work best for communities. These are empirical, not ideological, questions." He holds up the Mayo Clinic model as an ideal in opposition to McAllen's model and calls for incentives to encourage that model: "The decision is whether we are going to reward the leaders who are trying to build a new generation of Mayos and Grand Junctions. If we don’t, McAllen won’t be an outlier. It will be our future."
David Goldhill's "How American Health Care Killed My Father". Goldhill writes, "The most important single step we can take toward truly reforming our system is to move away from comprehensive health insurance as the single model for financing care. And a guiding principle of any reform should be to put the consumer, not the insurer or the government, at the center of the system. I believe if the government took on the goal of better supporting consumers—by bringing greater transparency and competition to the health-care industry, and by directly subsidizing those who can’t afford care—we’d find that consumers could buy much more of their care directly than we might initially think, and that over time we’d see better care and better service, at lower cost, as a result." I disagree: while people should be given incentives to remain in good health, people should have some financial protection against accidents. (To friends who have thought more about this: this is your cue to comment.)
Jonathan Rauch's "If Air Travel Worked Like Health Care", which, in Brooks's words, "takes the form of a customer trying to book a flight with a customer service representative."

* This is the first year I've been aware of them; I'm taking his word on it.

MIT missed connections

2009-12-25T17:08:00.000-08:00

I came across I Saw You MIT, a Craigslist-style "missed connections" page. I'll admit that I never read Craigslist missed connections, but this page seems like a decent winter break procrastination tool*.

* Especially for those fascinated by MIT undergraduate culture. I'm looking at you, you-know-who-you-are.

Star Trek turns women away from computer science

2009-12-17T17:41:00.001-08:00

Thanks to Derek Rayside for sending me this article about how Star Trek decor "stops women from becoming computer scientists. Prof. Sapna Cheryan at University of Washington reports on a study where they surveyed the impressions of college students on computer science after spending time in a room decorated with Star Trek and other "geek" paraphernalia and after spending time in a "neutral" room. They report that women were less desiring of joining the "geeky room" after graduation while men did not express a similar bias. While the results of this study seem somewhat "well, duh" and the experimental setup may seem a bit cheesy*, this sort of research is probably important for helping institutions identify what is driving underrepresented minorities away from fields like computer science.

* It seems like a cleaner way to arrive at the same conclusion is to test whether women express stronger preference for room decor than men do. The current setup (and the current reporting) makes all sorts of assumptions about the gendering of geek culture and women's interest in Star Trek and comic books. This leaves a bad taste in my mouth because it perpetuates gender roles which 1) may be societal constructions and 2) may be harmful.

Python is for girls

2009-12-15T21:30:00.001-08:00

Thanks to Phil Guo for sending me this.

Guido van Rossum, the Benevolent Dictator of Python, said he was going to wear this shirt to PyCon: "Python is for Girls."

From the site: "This Design is actually one of those ideas you get when you had a couple beers with your friend. Even if the design isn't clear about it, lets make sure we are on the same page: Python is a great and powerful language and so easy to use that even cute girls can use it. This is proved."

Um*?

* My issue here is that this perpetuates harmful stereotypes about the abilities of boys and girls. By the way, before men co-opted programming as a "macho" task requiring special masculine abilities, programming was viewed as "women's work." Also, I must remind you that with the ease of use of Python comes with trade-offs. Recall my favorite programming language conversation:

Naive friend: Does your thing take a really long time to run for n=10,000?
Powerful Jean: Um yeah. It takes a whole minute, maybe?
NF: Oh. Mine has been running since before dinner.
PJ: Haha. Should have used C.

Girls, if you care about performance, use C. ;)

IAP C/C++ and Haskell classes

2009-12-15T21:17:00.000-08:00

Over IAP*, Sasa Misailovic and I are teaching a three-unit, 6-day/lecture C/C++ course focusing on C memory management (why you would use a C-family language rather than a memory-managed language) and C++ classes (why you would use C++ rather than C for this purpose). We intend for this course to be most useful for undergraduates who want to learn C for systems classes. (60+ undergraduates have already registered!) More information here:

Joe Near and I are teaching a two-day Haskell course: the first day will be an introduction to Haskell concepts (the type system, monads, type classes); the second day will be a demonstration of applications for which Haskell is useful. We intend this course to be for people familiar with functional programming who want to pick up Haskell. More information here:

* MIT's Independent Activities Period between terms in January.

Spotlight on ginger

2009-12-15T21:01:00.000-08:00

Many know of my obsessions with coconuts, yogurt, fruit, and soy chorizo. One of my lesser-known (but equally strong) obsessions is with ginger snacks. I usually get crystallized ginger (made by cooking ginger with sugar), which is supposedly good for colds and indigestion. Today I came upon naked ginger, which is uncrystallized but still involves sugar. (I prefer naked ginger to crystallized ginger.) I always feel good about eating ginger because it tastes like candy but makes me feel like I am doing positive things for my body*.

* This is kind of like my previous 5-day-long fling with Viactiv, but healthier**.
** I would like to think...

Naked Comedy Showcase

2009-12-13T12:06:00.000-08:00

After attending The Slutcracker, I topped off my night of nudity by going to the Naked Comedy Showcase at the Oberon in Harvard Square. The show was hosted by Boston comedian Andy Ofiesh and featured local comedians including Cameron Moore, Phone Whore, Chris Fleming, and Zach Sherwin* (a.k.a. MC Mr. Napkins). All comedians performed in the buff; some of them made reference to their nudity while others just did their bits. They also took a few people from the audience who came up to the stage told jokes in the nude. There is another show January 8, 2010 at 10:30 pm: consider going!

* A hilarious hip-hop rapper comedian. Top hits include Plush Pig and Sphygmomanometer ("and now in morse code...").

The Slutcracker

2009-12-13T11:57:00.000-08:00

The Slutcracker, a "sexy freaky holiday zeitgeist spectacular" burlesque version of The Nutcracker, is playing now in the Somerville Theater*. Starring the wonderfully talented dancer Malice in Wonderland as Clara and based on the slutcracker prince (a pink and glittery personified vibrator) fighting the prude fiance, the show is thrilling and well-choreographed. Dances include the Bacchanalia Harem (featuring dancers with names like Cherry Phosphate, Decolletage, Femme Brulee, and Havana Tormenta) and the Dance of the Reed Pole (featuring Sugar Dish). I recommend catching it while it's still playing**. Read the press here.

* I saw it this past Friday; it's showing today and next weekend (Dec. 17-20).
** Leave the kids at home.

Hyatt layoffs

2009-12-08T17:11:00.000-08:00

Fellow CSAILer Rachel Sealfon brought it to my attention that several Boston area Hyatts laid off their workers and replaced them with half-wage temporary workers under circumstances with questionable ethics. Though many important people, including Governor Deval Patrick, have asked patrons to boycott the Hyatt until the workers have been re-hired, the Hyatt has done little to rectify the situation. We wrote a letter to MIT President Hockfield asking for MIT to use its partnership with the Hyatt on Memorial Drive to pressure the Hyatt for more ethical treatment of its workers.

You can do the following to show your support:

Sign the pledge to boycott the Hyatt.
Write to Michael Hickey, the General Manager of the Hyatt Regency Cambridge, at michael.hickey@hyatt.com.
Join the facebook group "Bring Back the Hyatt 100."
Donate to help support the Hyatt workers.

Grad school application advice

2009-12-07T05:49:00.000-08:00

CMU professor Luis von Ahn (the inventor of Captcha) has this blog post of application advice. Advice #1: "DON'T start your research statement with a quote from Albert Einstein. You may think that's a good idea, but so do the other 50% of the applicants. Hell, don't start it with any quote, unless it's from something like Gossip Girl. XOXO."

Environmental chemicals: feminizing boys?

2009-11-23T20:41:00.000-08:00

Yes, I'm somewhat behind on blogging--I just finished a big deadline on Saturday.

(A couple of weeks ago) Owen sent me this Slashdot story about an unofficial Danish study suggesting that environmental chemicals are "feminizing boys." From Slashdot:

"Denmark has unveiled official research showing that two-year-old children are at risk from a bewildering array of gender-bending chemicals in such everyday items as waterproof clothes, rubber boots... A picture is emerging of ubiquitous chemical contamination driving down sperm counts and feminizing male children all over the developed world. Research at Rotterdam's Erasmus University found that boys whose mothers were exposed to PCBs and dioxins were more likely to play with dolls and tea sets and dress up in female clothes... '"

Yikes? I didn't realize that chemicals could change culture and socialization in such strong ways*.

* Sarcasm.

Write badly well

2009-11-23T20:35:00.000-08:00

I love this hilarious blog, how to write badly well, by one of the authors of the book Who Writes This Crap? A quote from the post "Learn about syllepsis, then refuse to stop employing it":

"As he ran a red light, the conversation back in his mind and away from his troubles, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of rising panic and the soft matte finish of his hand-stitched leather steering wheel. Angelica had been absolutely right and his wife for fifteen years, so why was he running scared, these kind of risks and this deadly gauntlet of illicit entanglements?"

How not to write your statement of purpose

2009-11-03T20:38:00.000-08:00

While talking to a friend who is currently applying to graduate schools, I remembered that blogger FemaleScienceProfessor had a hilarious Statement of Purpose essay contest last December. If your essay starts sounding like this, this, or these, you might want to whip out that red pen a few more times before you submit those applications.

Yes means Yes: perspectives on and proposals for American female sexuality

2009-11-01T08:05:00.000-08:00

I just finished Yes Means Yes! Visions of Female Sexual Power in a World Without Rape, a collection of essays discussing the use of sex as a weapon (as in rape) and how a sex-positive environment that celebrates rather than denies sexuality would discourage this practice. The main argument of this book is that sex should occur not in the absence of objection, but in the presence of (active) consent. Among the interesting perspectives the book provides are the following:

There are a couple of essays about how the black female is hypersexualized in our society and how this is harmful. In Trial by Media, Samhita Mukhopadhyay talks about how because our society views the black female as always sexually available, it is not possible for black women to complain about sex crimes committed against them.
A related theme in many of the essays is that of "victim-blaming:" the legal system (and society) dismisses rape charges by women who have been dressed provocatively, drinking, doing drugs, consenting to spend time with her attacker(s), etc.
In Invasion of Space by a Female, Coco Fusco talks about the use of female sexuality as a weapon in military torture.
An anti-rape activist talks, among other things, about how pornography can be positive for people to overcome trauma and figure out their desires. This was interesting to me because I had previously thought of pornography as harmful and anti-feminist.
In Why Nice Guys Finish Last..., transgender woman Julia Serano talks about how women help perpetuate the predator/prey relationship between men and women by liking "assholes" rather than "nice guys." Serano says we need to stop viewing women as prey, making the following interesting point: "...many people in both the political/religious Right, as well as many anti-pornography feminists, seem to take what I call the "virgin" approach. Their line of reasoning goes something like this: Because men are predators, we should desexualize women in the culture by, for example, banning pornography and discouraging representations of women... that others can interpret as sexually arousing or objectifying. This approach not only is sexually repressive and disempowering for many women, but it also reinforces the idea that men are predators and women are prey. In other words, it reaffirms the very system that it hopes to dismantle."
In Who're You Calling a Whore, three sex workers talk about how in the current sexual environment, being a sex worker can be empowering because it allows for having boundaries (for saying "no") and for experimentation. One quote that stuck with me was Mariko Passion saying that because she had been assaulted, being able to say "no" again and again was very therapeutic for her. This was very interesting because I had always been very confused as to what to think about sex work re: female objectification and empowerment and the only other primary sources I really had before was those of anti-raunch feminist writer Ariel Levy and former sex worker Shelley Lubben. (I've read interviews with Sasha Gray and Jenna Jameson, but the journalist usually paints them as somewhat deluded about their empowerment as a result of earlier trauma.)

The book also made me aware of various issues of injustice: for instance, the rights that illegal immigrant women, sex workers, and drug-addicted, low-income pregnant women have over their bodies. I highly recommend this book, as it made me think about many things. Since sexuality is inextricably involved with male/female power dynamics, it is important to explore one's views about it.

The urban meaning of my name

2009-10-27T16:56:00.000-07:00

(Extrapolated) courtesy of my college roommate Aliza*: this ghetto fabulous** mug defining my last name, Yang.

* 08:08:11 PM) Aliza Aufrichtig: you should hyperlink my name with my urban dictionary def!
(08:08:37 PM) jean.yang: it's so derogatory
(08:08:40 PM) jean.yang: i don't know if i condone it
(08:08:43 PM) Aliza Aufrichtig: i know!
(08:08:44 PM) Aliza Aufrichtig: wtf
** Purposeful malapropism to reflect the real reason we had been using Urban Dictionary: Aliza told me my new shoes were "ghetto fabulous" and I did not understand.

Upcoming event: Malalai Joya in Boston

2009-10-27T16:25:00.000-07:00

I would like to thank Alyssa Aguilera for letting me know about this.

Malalai Joya is speaking at various locations in Boston (including MIT and Harvard) in the next few days. There is a schedule here. From Facebook:

Malalai Joya, called "the bravest woman in Afghanistan", is a former member of the Afghan parliament who has repeatedly stood up to the warlords, for women's rights and democracy. A former teacher who set up secret schools for girls, an orphanage and free clinic in her impoverished home province of Farah during the Taliban era, she ran for parliament in 2005 to protect her schools and won, becoming the youngest person elected to Afghanistan's new Parliament at the age of 27.

From the End Violence calendar:

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

Malalai Joya comes to MIT to talk about women's rights, her work, and the struggle for women's rights in Afghanistan.

Called "the bravest woman in Afghanistan", Joya is a member of the Afghan parliament who has repeatedly stood up to the warlords, for women's rights and democracy. Despite having had four assassination attempts against her, she refuses to remain silent and continues to fight for women's rights.

Location: MIT Campus Room 10-250

Event starts at 7 PM

Event is free and open to the public. Donations for the costs of bringing Joya here and for the Defense Committee for Malalai Joya are encouraged and appreciated.

Breaking out of the "Good Girl" mold

2009-10-26T20:45:00.000-07:00

I recently finished Rachel Simmons's The Curse of the Good Girl, which is about how expectations of perfection limit girls' personal and professional development. Simmons presents a societal perception of "good girls" as being intelligent but not opinionated, accomplished but not intimidating. Good girls always say yes, never complain, and always do the right thing. Simmons argues that the impossibility of these standards causes girls to lose their identities*. Because the pressure to be nice causes girls to avoid addressing conflicts, many girls only have "nice mode" and "out-of-control mode" and enter into adulthood unprepared for addressing emotions of anger and frustration. The pressure to appear perfect also causes adolescent girls to be risk averse in the classroom and on the playing field, keeping their mouths shut and "playing nice." Because society expects girls to be perfect, they also take it much more personally when their mistakes are made known. The combination of these behaviors prevents many girls from making mistakes, getting feedback on those mistakes, and learning from their mistakes. Simmons asks parents and educators to recognize what is happening in order to change expectations and, ultimately, girls' behaviors.

While I wish Simmons had provided some speculation as to 1) how these standards of the "good girl" came about and 2) ways in which society reinforces them, I liked this book for thoroughly exploring the consequences of society's expectations of girls. Simmons's main points particularly resonated with me because the "curse of the good girl" is one of my main complaints about Harvard as a male-dominated institution. It had always bothered me that the "good girl" is a ubiquitous character at Harvard, playing the nonthreatening and admiring audience to the equally ubiquitous omniscient male "section hero." As my college roommate Marianne puts it, at Harvard it is difficult to be a woman who thinks about these things without becoming cynical.

I recommend this book to all parents of daughters, to all educators, and to women who wonder why they find themselves and other women exhibiting self-destructive nice-girl behaviors**.

* The book Reviving Ophelia raises questions about what causes the loss of self in adolescent girls. This had been something we talked quite a bit about in my all-girls middle/high school.
** I get the feeling that this book is primarily for people who deal with adolescent girls. There are many exercises in the book for the reader to do with an adolescent girl. While I still found the book useful, doing those exercises alone was somewhat awkward. ;)

Feministing tour

2009-10-26T20:15:00.000-07:00

I attended the Feministing blog tour at Boston College today. Miriam Perez and Courtney Martin from blog and a BC senior Rachel Lamorte were held a panel discussion about feminism and feminist activism after they spoke briefly about issues important to them. Rachel spoke about feminist activism on BC's campus, Courtney spoke about how she became a feminist, her life as a feminist blogger/writer, and what blogging has taught her, and Miriam spoke about coming out as queer. Courtney and Miriam also signed books: Courtney signed her book Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters and Miriam signed Yes Means Yes! Visions of Female Sexual Power & a World Without Rape, in which she has a chapter.

Before this panel, I had not thought much about how much the blogosphere has facilitated the evolution of "young feminism." As Courtney joked, blogs like Feministing provide a way for the "lone feminist in Arkansas" to connect with like-minded people on the internet. (I didn't realize that Feministing has half a million unique readers per month.) Feministing (along with Shameless, Bitch Magazine, etc.) have been great for me personally in exploring my views on various feminist and other issues (portrayal of women in the media, reactions to feminist/anti-feminist comments by public figures, male chivalry, "sexy" Halloween costumes, general activist issues, etc. etc. etc.). I had not realized that I had stepped into something fairly new: the internet has enabled bloggers to evolve "the face of young feminism" and to reach out to a much larger audience than the older generation of predominantly white, upper-middle class female feminists.

Attending this panel made me realize that both at Harvard and at MIT, I did not encounter a women's group like the one at BC. BC seems to have an active group of feminist activists; they also seem to have men's groups interested in stopping sexual assault etc. I was happy to see some men at this event, a couple of whom asked questions and commented about men's roles in feminist activism*. Maybe it's just that I haven't been paying attention, but a quick search of MIT resources doesn't turn up much. (Harvard did get that controversial women's center while I was an undergraduate there.) If anybody knows about feminist activism on MIT's campus, please let me know.

I bought Yes Means Yes! and it is amazing so far. Thanks to Alicia Johnson, BC '11, for organizing this event!

* Courtney had a great answer to this question: she said that playing the apologetic, priveleged role puts men in a disadvantaged position. She suggests than an "authentic way" for men to particpate in feminist conversations is to think about the ways in which they have an haven't been privileged and the role this has played in their lives.

Some useful websites

2009-10-25T19:19:00.000-07:00

Umbrella today? texts you in the morning if there is a forecast of rain. You can set the time at which it sends the text.

Gethuman gives you tips about how to get a human on the phone for various customer service websites for banks, phone companies, etc. It also tells you average wait times, etc. Some highlights from the instructions:

Press 0 at each prompt, ignoring messages.
Don't press or say anything.
Say "Technical Support" or "CRG" if you want to cancel services. If you want to make programming changes say, "ACE". The robot woman will then say, "One moment while I transfer you" instead of asking you about 50 billion questions.
Press 000#; at prompt press #

A nice counterpoint to de Millo, Lipton, and Perlis

2009-10-25T19:09:00.000-07:00

Asperti, Geuvers,and Natarajan have this fun paper, Social processes, program verification, and all that, which provides a nice counterpoint to the 1979 De Millo, Lipton, and Perlis which supposedly killed the verification effort at the time. The De Millo paper argues that because proofs are social processes verified by the intuition of mathematicians, mechanized verification is a useless effort.

My favorite quote from the De Millo paper:
The verification of even a puny program can run into dozens of pages, and there's not a light moment or a spark of wit on any of those pages. Nobody is going to run into a friend's office with a program verification. Nobody is going to sketch a verification out on a paper napkin. Nobody is going to buttonhole a colleague into listening to a verification. Nobody is ever going to read it. One can feel one's eyes glaze over at the very thought.

From this paper:
As we have already observed, the gloomy predictions of De Millo et al. have been largely refuted. Formal verification is at present a concrete reality, permitting correctness proofs of complex software applications. For instance, in the framework of the Verifix Project a compiler from a subset of Common Lisp to Transputer code was formally checked in PVS (see Dold and Vialard (2001)). Strecker (Strecker 1998) and Klein (Klein 2005) certified bytecode compilers from a subset of Java to a subset of the Java Virtual Machine in Isabelle. In the same system, Leinenbach (Leinenbach et al. 2005) formally verified a compiler from a subset of C to a DLX assembly code. The Compcert project, headed by Xavier Leroy, has recently produced a verified optimising compiler from C to PowerPC assembly code, based on the use of the Coq proof assistant both for programming the compiler and proving its correctness (Leroy 2006; Tristan and Leroy 2008). Similar achievements have been obtained in other fields of computer science, spanning the range from hardware (Harrison 2007) to operating systems (Alkassar et al. 2009; Klein 2009).

Vegan/vegetarian food shopping note

2009-10-20T10:45:00.000-07:00

If you subsist mostly on almond milk, organic yogurt, and vegan fake meat products, you are better off (on average $1/per item) shopping at places like Harvard Organic Co-op than Star Market, which kind of rips you off on these things (and has far worse selection). The fruit is actually comparably priced as well.

Deal hunting with RSS

2009-10-20T10:42:00.000-07:00

A cool thing in life involves adding RSS feeds from deal sites (for instance, monitor deals from Ben's Bargains) to Google Reader. You can just add the URL directly as a subscription. <3

Sharing good reads

2009-10-18T22:45:00.001-07:00

I recently became a member of goodreads.com, a website that allows friends to share books they have read along with ratings and optional reviews of the books. Become my friend to see what I have read!

The memoirs of Donna Williams

2009-10-14T20:07:00.000-07:00

I recently read about Donna Williams, an Australian woman thought to be deaf and psychotic as a toddler and later diagnosed as autistic. She has written several books about her life, the first of which is the once best-selling Nobody Nowhere. She writes of its accidental publication:

I wrote the first of my four autobiographical works, Nobody Nowhere, on the verge of suicide after a wild half-crazy life with abuse, homelessness and ultimately hope for belonging only to find I was terrified of real closeness. I had a last inkling of hope that I couldn't truly say I'd tried my hardest to cope if I'd never fully disclosed the nature of my own private world. So I wrote out everything that mattered... and decided to give it to one child psychiatrist in the hope they could tell me what kind of mad I was... My intention was to then shred it, burn it and leave this world. Instead it was passed on to his colleague, then from her to her publisher, from him to an agent and from there out into the world it became a number one international bestseller...

In this book about her early life, Williams discusses extensively her "ghosts" Willie and Carol, two different and opposing personalities who help her exist in society. From the website:

Carol plays the mother's doll, intertwined with Willie's violent and defensive outbursts and fierce self protection mechanisms. Between Donna's autistic responses and behaviours, Carol, behaves like people on TV sit-coms, goes to school, even goes through the motions of 'friends', and develops a broad range of mimicked speech, stored phrases and charicatures, saving Donna from a life in an institution and often from the very real threat of death.

As the teenage years approach Carol and Willie fight it out for control of the body with the real Donna on the sidelines as the lot of them drift into homelessness, poverty and domestic prostitution passed from stranger to stranger.

I plan to read this book once I acquire it. Williams also has an extensive website which I recommend reading.

The novels of my nonage

2009-10-13T20:34:00.000-07:00

In my abundant spare time today (read: while crossing streets) I reflected upon the books that shaped my youth. Since I love reminiscing and since I think they are rather telling, I will share my most memorable reads here.

Middle school: Ellen Raskin's The Westing Game. I love historical fiction and detective novels (there was a lot of Agatha Christie). I also loved those female novelists of the Victorian/Romantic genre: Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, etc. (I read Jane Eyre maybe 10+ times. I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 5+ times.)

An embarrassing truth is that I read a ton of young adult novels (Beverly Cleary, R.L. Stein, Babysitters' Club, Caroline B. Cooney, etc.). I do not recommend that other middle schoolers take this path.

9th grade: This might have been the year I lost to being a teenager, the year I read only magazines outside of the required school reading (Beowulf, Canterbury Tales, The Bible, King James Version)? The Odyssey was probably the book that left the biggest impression me.

10th grade: I was a huge romantic: Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky) made the concept of atonement enter into my thinking; This Side of Paradise (Fitzerald) made me fall in love with the F. Scott Fitzgerald rich-intellectual-white-1920's-boy lifestyle. (I have since fallen out of love.) Bruce Hall's Tea That Burns about the history of American Chinatowns also gave me some perspective about my life as a Chinese-American.

11th grade. I was such a wannabe-intellectual: The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson; Sartor Resartus (Carlyle). I also continued my Fitzgerald obsession and read things like The Beautiful and the Damend, Tender is the Night, etc. I even read Zelda Fitzgerald's autobiographical Save Me the Waltz. (I recently got closure with respect to this from reading Nancy Milford's biography, Zelda.)

12th grade. Looking for meaning: Mrs. Dalloway (Woolf). Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles also made me think a lot about life. This may have also been the time I was in love with Oscar Wilde's poetry, particularly The Ballad of Reading Gaol. King Lear also left a deep impression. I also found Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead fascinating, but I did not become an Objectivist.

Freshman year. Soul searching: Siddartha (Hesse); The Bhagavad-Gita; A Room of One's Own (Woolf). This might have also been when I read Schlosser's Fast Food Nation and stopped eating forevermore.

Sophomore year. I read a bunch of Greek tragedies which I liked a lot. I also read The Brothers Karamazov, which I had started shortly after Crime and Punishment changed the way I thought about things. By this point, however, I was too jaded (or something) for Brothers to capture my attention/imagination in the same way.

My favorite book this year was probably Introduction to Algorithms (Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, Stein).

Junior year. Lolita (Nabokov)--this was when I discovered Nabokov. I also read Hemingway's Garden of Eden, which made me think a bunch about gender roles. After reading Watson's The Double Helix, I became fascinated with the concept of the "gentleman scientist:" if Watson and Crick played squash every day while discovering the structure of DNA, then I should be able to have leisure and greatness at the same time, too!

Senior year. I started reading Saint Augustine's Confessions, which was really interesting. I also read some Camus. By this point a lot of ideas were already in my head, so I don't know that things really "changed my life" the way they used to. The closest was probably Jeffrey Euripedes's Middlesex, which sparked an extreme interest in gender ambiguity.

Post-graduation I've been reading a lot more non-fiction and discussing most of the interesting books in my blog, so I won't list them again. :) I would love to hear what your favorite books were!

Sheryl Sandberg: Don't Leave Before You Leave

2009-10-11T21:34:00.001-07:00

Claire Le Goues sent me this nice article by Facebook's COO Sheryl Sandberg about how women should not plan too far in advance to slow down their careers before they actually have children. Sandberg says that this tends to slow down women's careers more than it should and gives the following advice:

Making decisions too early, trying to plan life too carefully, can close doors rather than keep them open. Any time you make a plan, you do it with imperfect information; the further in advance you make that plan, the less information you have. You never know how you will feel or what choices you might face. Take life one step at a time and don’t make decisions before you have to.

I think this article gives great advice about not letting perceived limitations get in the way of one's career.

Overhead on the MIT Saferide shuttle

2009-10-10T22:11:00.000-07:00

I overhead the following conversation conducted in earnest by two (presumably) undergraduate women on the shuttle to Boston the other day:

Woman #1: Sometimes I don't know what the point is of working so hard. I mean, what if I graduate college and then get married right away?
Woman #2: Yeah...
Woman #1: I mean, that's what my mom did.
Woman #2: I think I'm going to work for 5-10 years, then start popping out the babies.
...
Woman ?: I would get so bored. There would be so much Oprah...
Woman ?: Yeah, a lot of talking on the phone...

I will admit my first reaction was one of disbelief: a combination of "can you believe these girls?!" and "what a waste of an MIT education!" I was struck by how resigned these girls were to their fates, and how unreflective they seemed to be about the other life possibilities out there. I was particularly surprised to hear such a conversation on an MIT shuttle: it seems like if you are going to spend all this effort (and tuition) on an undergraduate education in order to stay at home, it is a waste of your own time/money and the institution's time/money that you did not get a liberal arts education.

Though it is easy to blame these girls for not having more agency in deciding their futures, we must take some societal responsibility for these attitudes. Most people do not really know what's out there for them at age 20 and follow models that others have set out for them. While the young man who does not know what he's doing with his life will often find himself enrolling in law school, business school, or some prestigious Ph.D. program, the young woman who does not know what she's doing may have much less career-oriented paths to fall back on*. While I fully believe in the freedom to choose, it is not freedom if the chooser is not aware of what the choices mean. Choosing to go to MIT and work hard seems to be at odds with the "choice" to stay home with Oprah and the phone; I believe that if these women were aware of their life choices, they may choose differently. (Even if they chose to stay at home, they may discover that Oprah and phone are not the only possible activities.)

While on the shuttle, I wanted to tell these girls that they do not have to be like their mothers. Perhaps I will do that if there is a next time.

* This is an instance of the phenomenon where many women default to their mother's template of domesticity, often without reflecting upon why they are doing this. (I discuss this in my post about My Mother My Self.

Aggressively marketed enlightenment

2009-10-08T16:17:00.000-07:00

Allow me to begin with an anecdote about the time I almost joined a cult.

One day last May I was innocently wandering X* Square when I came upon a sign regarding massages at a Dahn Yoga studio. Always in want of a good massage, I inquired within. What commenced was the most extensive set of influence techniques** I have ever witnessed. Each event below ends with an influence technique:

I walk in and ask about massages. Y*, the head of the studio, asks to make an appointment to see me in 45 minutes. (Asking people to make small commitments to enhance their bond to the thing in question.)
All around the studio, there is information about how Dahn yoga can improve every aspect of your life and there are testimonials about how it has changed people's lives for the better. (Yikes.)
Y asks me to fill out a 10-page questionaire (Small commitments thing again. People don't like to think they've put in effort for nothing.)
Upon hearing that my physical therapist told me to seek more restorative forms of yoga, Y asks, "So you would say your PT sent you here?" (People like to be consistent; you can take advantage of their desire for consistency to bend what they say slightly in order to influence them to do things.)
We jump around for about 30 minutes in a one-on-one session. (One-on-one attention makes people feel like they owe something.)
The whole time, Y told me things like the vibrations from jumping around were good for my brain, and that I was loosening my organs. (People are suckers for things they want to believe.)
After the jumping around, Y gave me a brief massage. When the massage was over, my contact was bothering me, so I was rubbing my right eye. Y began rubbing his left eye and said that his eye was bothering him too. (Mirroring, a phenomenon that occurs when people are bonding, is oftne used by salespeople for influence purposes. You can also hypnotize someone by mirroring: if you consistently lag without the other people noticing, you can begin leading and have them follow. Apparently you can make someone's cheek itch by scratching your own cheek.)
Afterward, Y asked me how I liked the session. (Asking people how they feel after you give them something will influence them to say good things about your product. Then you can take advantage of their desire for consistency.)
Y then told me that I had a lot of passion, which made me a good fit for Dahn Yoga. (Appealing to people's vanity is a great way to get them to use your product.)
Y said since I liked the session so much, since I was looking for something to help with my neck/shoulder injuries, and since my PT sent me there, it looked like I should continue going. (Consistency again.)
Y told me that there were often weekend gatherings where young people get together and there is a lot of energy. (Appealing to people's desires for community can get you a lot from them.)
Y then asked me if I would be willing to commit to multiple years of Dahn Yoga. Then he pared down to one year, then six months, then three months. I finally gave in at one month. (Asking unreasonable things of people will cause them to feel guilty and be more likely to acquiesce to smaller requests.)
When I was leaving, Y asked me when I was going to come again. (Commitments.)
Y said that I should plan to come either a few minutes early or stay a few minutes late so that he could show me take-home exercises. (Commitments.)
I never went back. For a couple of weeks afterwards, I often got phone calls from "Y from Dahn Yoga, X Square," asking when I was going to come back. (Connection/commitment.)

It was fortunate that the few bigger things caused me to notice the subtle manipulation: apparently these techniques are what causes many people to pay a lot of money (and sometimes devote their lives) to Dahn Yoga. The most sketchy thing was that 1) jumping around is not yoga and 2) there is no scientific basis to the "brain vibrations" business. I was also somewhat disturbed/confused by the "Brain Respiration" uniforms hanging in the bathroom. What caused me to think that there was intentional deception rather than just innocent evangelism of bogus ideas was the mirroring. Upon returning home I read their Wikipedia page, which linked to some references about how people had complained about Dahn Yoga's manipulative marketing, how people claim it is a pyramid scheme, and how at least one family has asked a cult deprogrammer to intervene with their son who had sold all of his possessions to live according to the way of Dahn yoga.

My Dahn yoga experience caused me to think more about the aggressive marketing of Bikram yoga (also see Wikipedia page and the Bikram Boston site.), a multi-million dollar franchised corporation which similarly claims to solve all health problems and has many testimonials from people saying that this has changed their life (and solved all of their problems). Bikram yoga has a similar script of telling you during the practice that. Bikram also has its own set of influence techniques: the instructors establish a clear teacher/student relationship and make you feel that you are not good enoughand must improve, causing you to return time after time even though you are spending a lot of money to be uncomfortable. (At least, this happened to me.) After a month and a half of Bikram, I talked to a middle-aged couple who said that everyone they knew who had done bikram had quit after less than six month due to injuries. This caused me to quit abruptly after I realized I wasn't getting any better. Though I wanted to believe the instructors when they said "this is the best thing to do if you have a neck injury" and "don't worry, you'll get worse before you get better," I had lost faith in Bikram.

I hypothesize that, like me, many are drawn to "programs" like Bikram because of a combination of 1) injuries and 2) desire for an easy path to spirituality. If I had not had that neck injury (that, by that point, had not healed for 10 months), I would not have been so desperate for things that promised to fix everything. I have also been told that though I am areligious, I have a strong desire for explanation and order: religious tendencies, if you will. I had come across bikram/dahn at a time when I believed that I could find "the solution to everything," " the relevation that changed my life." I also had many qualities that made me particularly receptive to this form of prepackaged, aggressively marketed enlightenment: I was not accustomed to waiting long to get anything that I wanted, most of my life and self-image were already comprised of aggressively marketed components, and the specific marketing of Bikram/Dahn appealed to my needs***. In an alternate universe that has a slighly more unfortunate (or perhaps fortunate, as I would be living in blissful, ignorant poverty?) outcome I could see myself devoting large amounts of time and money to something like this.

While the aggressive marketing aspect of Bikram and Dahn are harmful, they are not necessarily all bad. On one hand, this aggressive marketing is harmful because it preys on people's desire for spirituality and desire for an answer in order to market a product that is, essentially, fake. On the other hand, many people do believe in things like Bikram and Dahn and are perfectly happy about that. Bikram and Dahn could also be giving people health benefits, since they may not otherwise stretch or exercise****. The mental aspect (placebo effect) could also be improving lives. The major thing that makes something like Dahn Yoga more harmful than a religion is how aggressively it extracts money from Dahn practitioners. One might say that people who spend all of their money on Dahn deserve it, but many are young people who may be living on their parents' money. (See the external links on Dahn wikipedia page for stories on Dahn harm.) These people can believe what they want, but it may be our duty to make the information available to them that they are worshiping at the (very expensive) Church of McDonald's.

Since leaving Bikram, I have found a form of aggressively marketed enlightenment that better fits my lifestyle needs: heated vinyasa flow yoga. I like these studios much better because they do not claim to solve all problems and they do not claim to be the end-all be-all of spiritual needs. In fact, some instructors recommend other forms of yoga (like yin) that are more restorative. While it is somewhat ironic that instructors tell me to relax and breathe while cuing me through cycles of posture changes so fast they leave me out of breath, this has been a step in the right direction for my type A, impatient personality. I have become better at relaxing, better at being patient, and better at not pushing myself too hard--learning to modify postures in yoga has been one of my first lessons that it is often better for me not to do everything that I possible could. My dabbling in Spirituality Lite has had positive effects on my wellness (by first of all teaching me that this is is a concept), both physically and mentally. One day, I might be ready for The Real Thing. ;)

* Names obfuscated to protect ...?
** Good thing I read Cialdini's Influence, a book on psychological influence techniques used by salespeople, prison camps, and cults alike.
*** The message of both was that if you paid them money and kept coming, everything would be better. (The Bikram instructors' incessant "constructive" criticism also addressed my need to have my butt kicked.) This is an easier message to swallow than the prescription to slow down, take it easy, and find spirituality within. (For Bikram, the heat also tells you that you don't need to wait for your body to be ready to open: we'll just heat up the room so it happens instantaneously! This panders to the need for instant gratification in an extreme way.)
**** Bikram is actually a pretty good workout. One of the reasons I first took it up was because when I read the bios of Olympics athletes I discovered some of them would do 1+ days of Bikram a week to maintain flexibility. The Harvard crew team at one point also required a day of Bikram a week.

Tech interview preparation

2009-10-08T13:34:00.000-07:00

This is adapted from an e-mail I wrote in January 2007 (when I was a junior in college--after I'd gotten internship offers with Google and Microsoft but before I knew anything about life). Though my Google full-time conversion interviews were more of the same (of the technical stuff--the interviews were longer, so the questions were a little deeper), this is probably mostly relevant for applying to internships.

For Harvard people: At the Office of Career Services they have (or had?) a nice small booklet on how to prepare for the interview. It gives some pretty good advice about how long you should spend preparing (the number of hours in proportion to how long your interview is) and it has you do a self-evaluation.

Here are some websites with puzzles:
http://www.techinterview.org/
http://halcyon.usc.edu/~kiran/msqs.html
The programming questions on this one are good as well.

This website is good for the nontechnical aspects of the interivew:
http://www.wetfeet.com/

So some non-technical questions I've gotten are:

Tell me about yourself.
What was your favorite computer science class and why. (You will often be given questions based on what you say your favorite class is.)
Tell me about a time you solved a problem creatively.
Have you been in a situation where a project you've been doing has gotten off schedule and you couldn't make the deadline? What did you do?
Have you ever been in a situation in which someone has pushed you to do something that you didn't want to do? How did you respond?

Some technical questions I've gotten are:

How would you represent friendship networks on Facebook? (Say you have a list of people and their friends.) I was asked on what data structure I would use, running time for searching through it, space complexity, etc.
Given a vector of numbers, how would you find the median? Second part: say we chose a number and then put everything less than it on one side and everything greater than it on the other side. Assume we could throw away half the list each time. What would the running time be?
How could you get unbiased flips out of a biased coin? (Say you had a 2-side coin of unknown probability p of landing on heads--if you wanted to make an unbiased decision between 2 choices using the coins, how would you do it?)
Write a hex to decimal function.
Write an insert function for a circular linked list. If we are inserting into an empty list, how can we make it circular?
Write an insert before function for a singly linked list if you're only given the pointer to the node you want to insert before. (Hint: How can you turn this into an insert after function?)

Some good advice I've gotten has been:

The most important thing is to talk through how you are getting the answer. Even if you don't get the answer, talking through it to show how you think is very important.
If you get something wrong and they tell you the answer, don't argue with them unless you are sure your answer is right. (Think through it first, and discuss rather than argue!)

Mothers and daughters

2009-10-07T19:59:00.000-07:00

Upon my college roommate Marianne's recommendation, I read psychotherapist Nancy Friday's My Mother My Self. Originally published in 1977, this was the first work to explore the mother-daughter interaction. It addresses how mothers serve as a role model for daughters' self-esteem, attitudes words men, and attitudes towards sexuality.

While I found this book somewhat dated (for instance, in its casting of the mother as the homemaker with frustrated ambitions) and somewhat unscientific in some its wishful "just-so" descriptions (Friday makes a weak connection between repressed anger and cancer), it helped me to examine and to better understand 1) my relationship with my mother and 2) how I derived some of my views on life.

In particular, Friday makes the following thought-provoking points:

Mothers often start out (and often continue) to see daughters as narcissistic extensions of themselves. Friday says this explains the degree to which mothers fuss over their daughters' appearance, reputation, etc. and why mothers are often so critical of thier daughters.
Society* tells women they are not complete without a man, without their children, etc. As a result, mothers often cling to their husbands and to their children, especially to their daughters. As a result, daughters are not "let go" in the same way that sons are. For this reason, many women have symbiotic relationships with their mothers. (Friday points out that it is not necessarily bad to have these symbiotic relationships, but it is important to recognize them for what they are.)
Often as a result of not being "let go" by their mothers, many women go from having a symbiotic relationship with their mother to having a symbiotic relationship with their husbands. Friday points out that it is good for women to live on their own and have independent lives after separating from their mothers; this helps them realize that they can be on their own and not die.
It is not usually acceptible to acknowledge the competition (general and sexual) that almost always exists between mothers and their adolescent daughters. This competition often causes many problems between mother and daughter; it helps to understand the competition as the root of the problem.
Women often (consciously or subconsciously) adopt their mothers as a model for how they behave domestically. Many women will have fabulous and independent single lives in their 20's and then become quite similar to their (homemaking*) mothers after they marry. Friday's explanation for this is that these women can invent their own models of how to live while they are single, but they default to patterns they learned from their mothers once those apply. Recognizing this is step towards breaking out of the patterns.
Our attitudes about our bodies and towards sexuality have to do with our mothers' attitudes and things she taught us when we were very young. It is helpful and h to reflect on our mother's attitudes.

My Mother My Self was helpful to me because it provided another world-view in which to frame issues I often think about regarding mother-daughter relationships, gender roles, etc. I would recommend reading this book with a healthy level of skepticism. (I have found the phenomena that Friday describes to be true; I am more suspicious of the reasons she provides for their occurence.) If nothing else, it is interesting.

* This is one of the places where (I hope) the book does not age well.

Some more things I learned about saving money

2009-10-06T16:06:00.001-07:00

I would like to thank everyone who gave me financial advice!

My friend Jie recommended the following blogs:

From these blogs I learned that there are many online coupons.

I also came up with some more ideas for saving money*:

Subsist mainly on free food, such as that broadcast over MIT's vultures mailing list for free leftovers in Stata. (I have friends who actually do this.)
Befriend the admins in your building so that they text you about free food before they send out the free food announcements.
To fill in other gaps, join as many research groups as possible. Many of these are likely to provide a free lunch or snack. Tangentially collaborating with research groups in other departments will keep the level of suspicion low.
To fill in the rest of the gaps, meet a succession of older people with jobs to date on sites like OKCupid* and go on 1+ dates with each of them. Act very poor but charming during the whole dinner; if you are lucky they will pay. (This assumes that these sites contain a large number of people willing to take me to dinner, and that these people do not communicate with each other.)
Invest in a sewing kit and a set of patterns. Attend corporate talks and get as many free t-shirts as possible. Stay after the talks to get the leftover XL's that nobody wanted to collect fabric for making pants, dresses, handbags, etc.
Hang out in each T stop and befriend the T operators so that you can get free public transportation. ("Sorry, X--I can meet you in Porter Square, but I'll have to leave there between 9 and 12. If you want to stay later, we can meet at Government Center.")
Sell your furniture and move out of your apartment. During the week, sleep on a cot in your office. On the weekends, spend the night with hard-partying friends who think you're staying over just because the T stopped running. If this is unsatisfying and you would like a bed to sleep on, date a couple of people at once and spend your time between their apartments. (Befriending some empty nesters with spare rooms/beds should also work.) Either that, or convince your advisor to buy a group bed for one of the offices.
Become friends with freegans.

The conclusion is that living in the Stata Center cannot fail you, since it will also let you save on heat, hot water, and electric bills. :P

* Most of these are untested.
** Thanks to Eugene's peer pressure and my own curiosity I had an OKCupid account for 2-3 days (not for this reason!!), during which time I met some colorful people and decided it was best to leave the site.

My attempts at money management

2009-10-04T19:04:00.001-07:00

I recently discovered that I have been bleeding money out of my ears every day. I have taken the following measures to stanch the flow of money/blood:

Gotten an account at Mint.com, a website that syncs up with your bank and credit card accounts and shows you how you are doing with respect to your budgets. Thanks, Joe Near, for showing me this site!
Started following the advice of the Tight Fist (thanks, Eugene), a great tongue-in-cheek blog about how to save money. (I have been thinking quite seriously about their advice about how using too much soap just makes you need other things more, like moisturizer... If you give a mouse a cookie...)
Stopped shopping at Whole Foods/Harvest and started shopping at Star Market. This, combined with a reduction of variety in my diet to the staples of tofu sausage, eggs, noodles, vegetables, and fruits, saves me multiple 10's of dollars on groceries per week now.
Stopped buying random things I don't use full price from the internet. The next step will be finding deals when I need them... (I am currently operating under the assumption that I will not require anything new--this is not sustainable.)

Next on my list: using the library instead of buying 10,000 books / year.

I am still not to good at this thing, so please give me tips! :)