Religion is ridiculous, but then again so are sports and everything else

Sports are ruining the forward progress of our country. Too often, sports fanatics get together and do various things like roast meat from the backs of their cars. There is often bloodshed in the name of sports teams, often occurring between impassioned sports fans. Then there is also the sacrifice made by athletes themselves, many of whom suffer permanent physical injury from repeated concussions and ligament damage. Never mind that recreational sports provide a framework for exercise and the building of community; the fact that Sports have manifested itself in such an ugly way shows that it is a waste of anyone's time. As a result, we should make fun of athletes and sports fans as much as possible with the assurance that we are better than That.

This line of reasoning is not so different from the attacks on religion. While I am unabashedly atheist, I think projects like Bill Maher's Religulous (which I have not personally seen) miss the point. While religion has lent itself to excessive fanaticism and fundamentalism, the Bible Belt's Christianity and the Taliban's Islam reflect perversions of religious ideology rather than the negative effects of religion. When analyzing the problems of a society, considering the reasons for the perversion and the ways in which religious philosophy have been perturbed is a much more productive use of time than bemoaning religion for causing such evil. The fact that people do ugly things in the name of religion is not evidence of the corrupting power of religious ideology but a symptom of greater societal problems. In particular, examining religious fundamentalism in the United States reveals not the "evils of religion" but that the United States has areas that are so backwards and uneducated as to have people susceptible to such superstition.

By "religion," first consider not the loaded word it has become but the essence of belief--the Platonic form of what is embodied in the holy text. This is the pure thing separate from the associated religious institution and from the manifestion of religion in past/present/future society. In general, pure religious ideology provides a theological/metaphorical framework for living. If you go back to the texts of the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad-Gita, they provide ideas to think with and concepts to believe in. Engaging with these texts abstractly on the level of metaphor and metonymy provides great insight into how to live. There is nothing in the texts themselves proposing any sort of fundamentalism or closed-mindedness*. The Old Testament teaches justice; the New Testament teaches love; the Bhagavad-Gita teaches selfless service. None of these are bad concepts; perhaps the cocky libertarians who go around denouncing religion without knowing very much can learn something from religion.

Abstract consideration of religious texts is not that far off from what we can expect from religion in present times. If you look outside of the United States, there is evidence that people are able to engage with religion in a rational way. The same monotheistic, "enclosing" (to quote on criticism of Christianity) religions that cause all sorts of bad things in America are causing people to do just fine in Europe. I have heard the Anglican Church described as something of a "social club," and one friend even reported viewing a baptism being performed in a pool. (The validity of this report is questionable.) In Italy, home to the Vatican, people seem to take what the Pope says much less seriously than people do around here. People are able to handle a much less serious form of (the same!) religion and engage with it on a much more intellectual level. (And don't forget the Far Eastern religions: who has heard of people starting wars in the name of Buddhism?) In very few developed, first-world countries is religion one of the reasons why it is still a question whether women should be allowed control over their own bodies.

I hope this leads you to conclude that "religion" is not the root of the problem. Religious fundamentalism derives not from the principles of religion but from people needing simple frameworks to fill a void. This void comes from the lack of education. Religion provides a simple, closed way to explain the world; it provides easy answers for people who do not have access to more complex answers. To believe that people are not better than the narrow mindsets they have when only exposed to religion is to have too little faith in humanity (or too much faith in one's own genetic superiority). Lack of exposure to many ideas causes general fear and suspicion of new ideas; it is this fear that leads to the superstition and fundamentalism that characterizes too much of the religious belief in the United States.

To conclude, saying "religion is preventing the forward process of our country" is a useless statement. Appreciating religious texts and deriving moral and spiritual wisdom from them is one thing; deriving a closed-minded way of living from religion is a totally different thing. Blaming religion for the problems in America today draws attention away from the real issues at hand: the inequality of education and wealth that causes religious fanaticism to prevail in parts of the United States*.

* There are parts of the Bible saying to kill all people worshiping another God, but we must perform an amortized analysis, since most of the Bible does not say things like this.
** This is one reason libertarians are goons. The same people who go around saying that what you get is what you deserve also enjoy going around making fun of people for reasons that stem from lack of education, which ultimately come from inequality and things like lower taxes (and thus less funding for education).

Fun fact: There is nothing in Judaism that says you can't get buried in a Jewish cemetary if you get a piercing or tattoo. (The New York Times says so.) Be careful about conflacting religious doctrine with rules of the religious institutions and religion in practice.

Blast from the past: me in USA Today on choice of Harvard commencement speaker

Today, while engaging in various heuristic methods of confirming that I do exist to people other than myself*, I discovered this article in USA today, "Students are getting a say in commencement speakers," quoting me on Harvard's choice of J.K. Rowling:

"I feel cheated," says Jean Yang, a Harvard senior majoring in computer science. "It feels like a very trendy choice."

Yang says that although Harvard obviously thought more about giving students a popular speaker this year, most students just want to be inspired on their graduation day.

"When I look back at my commencement, I want to be reminded of something I was a part of," she says. "I don't want to think of it as the time of Harry Potter."

To provide some background, the commencement speaker at Harvard this year was J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series. Since this is no longer relevant, I'll just briefly summarize my thoughts: prior to graduation, I had been disappointed in the choice of commencement speaker given previous speakers (Bill Gates, Mother Theresa, etc.). Especially since I have only read one of the Harry Potter books, I felt that the graduation speaker situation epitomized the university's pandering to students' desires rather than focusing on giving us an education. (Harry Lewis expresses criticism of the commodification of education as it relates to an evolving Harvard in his book Excellence Without a Soul. I agree with many of these points.) Anyway, most of the criticism I had in choice of speaker is no longer relevant since the speech happened months ago and was actually very good. J.K. Rowling gave a very good speech, The Fringe Benefits of Failure, about how failure is educational, that we should keep our imaginations open, and that we should remember our positions in the world and not forget those less fortunate. This was a particular appropriate speech for our graduation, where President Drew Faust's address to us expressed her concern that so many students came to Harvard with idealism and optimism and would end up forgetting much of it to do consulting or investment banking. I am happy to report that Rowling surprised me by giving us appropriate and relevant advice as we headed off into the (perhaps particularly soulless?) unknown.

*I was... not... Googling myself...

SNL skit of VP debate

I wonder what Palin will think when she watches this skit with the sound off.

Summary of vice presidential debate

Palin: I will smile at you so you go easy on me. May I call you Joe?

Biden: That's my name. Now let me tell you some facts. John McCain is out to ruin America, and that's the truth.

Palin: But Barack Obama is terrible. He voted against X.

Biden: John McCain also voted against X, and Barack Obama had a reason.

Palin: I don't have notes telling me how to respond to that, but good thing while you were talking I was able to read more of my notes. Let's talk about something I know about instead. [Smile.] Barack Obama is terrible because he voted against Y.

Biden: That is not true. John McCain voted against Y.

Palin: You make me nervous, so let's talk about something I know. When I was mayor, in, you know, Alaska, I lowered some taxes.

Biden: I admire that. Back to the point.

Palin: Um. The point. Let's talk about the American workers. You guys are really, really great so I will smile at you. This is why you will vote for me.

Biden: But Joe Biden really cares about the American workers. Nobody is a bigger friend to American workers than Joe Biden.

Gwen: Back to the questions I'm asking.

Palin: I don't know how to answer them. It's because I'm a Washington outsider, not because I didn't really bother to get a great education or figure out what's up. If I smile and remind you that I've only been a candidate for 5 weeks, you won't even remember tomorrow that I've had my whole life to stop being clueless.

Biden: This is too easy.

Palin: Instead of answering questions or saying anything, I will smile.

Biden: I can smile too.

Why care about gender?

Q: Your point of view seems too gendered. Why do you waste your time with this crap instead of becoming more competent so people respect you more (or something like that)?
A: Because it is usually the case that people (not just white males) do not question the white male cultural standards by which much of our society is evaluated. Ignoring gender issues hurts non-males the way ignoring cultural differences hurts non-whites.

For instance, consider the differences in self-presentation between Chinese and American culture. An American might get the impression that his Chinese colleague is not so bright because the Chinese colleague prefaces everything with "I do not know what I am talking about, but..." (If people believe John McCain for repeating lies while there is much reason to not believe him, then how do you expect to not be influenced by what your colleague says?) What the American may not know is that the Chinese are quite influenced by the ancient intellectual philosopher that the dumber you appear to be, the more you can learn from others. As a result, Chinese schoolchildren (and adults) are taught to be humble and to be good students. This does not involve posturing, showing off knowledge gratuitously, and all kinds of other things that are often over-valued (imnsho) in American society.


Q: The "male" standards to which you refer seem to be "objective" standards. Isn't this a good thing?
A: You are absolutely right that "male" standards are "objective"... if you mean that males like to think such standards are objective. I have a proof that these standards are not objective. Suppose we take male standards to be objective, and suppose males value competence, which is measured by outward display of competence. Oh, and suppose by objective, we mean based on some absolute scale and not influenced by emotions, how much we like the person, or anything else bad like that. Given any two people, we will place them on some objective competence scale based on their Outward Display of Competence (ODC). WLOG, the presenter of competence encodes the ODC as English sentences which are sent through some channel and processed by the evaluator of competence. But oh wait, the brain is not a dependable processor and goes around filling in the blanks (and replacing things) left and right. (Psychologist and neuroscientists have shown this as much as anyone can show anything.) So even if there existed a semantic encoding that the presenter and evaluator could share, the evaluator's brain just added a bunch of layers of noise--noise dependent on the evaluator's background, which includes gender, culture, what s/he ate for lunch, and a bunch of oher things. So much for that. =><=


Q: You seem to want to view male and female as different cultures. Is this specific to American culture?
A: I have evidence that this is not specific to American culture. As I stated in my previous post, Deborah Tannen talks about how in cultures where men have indirect patterns of speech and women are direct, the indirect manner is valued more highly. I will state without much empirical evidence, however, that American culture is quite behind in gender equality issues. If we consider the differences between typically male and typically female modes of interaction and compare this to what is valued. I do not believe this difference is as great in, say, Israeli culture, where women join the army and are treated more like men.


Q: It seems that going to an all-girls school ruined you because not only did it cause you to view everything in terms of gender, but you seem to have had terribly difficulty dealing with a gender balanced environment upon arriving at college.
A: First of all, I don't view everything in terms of gender, but I do think it's important to not ignore the gender completely when considering interactions with people. How I deal with gender differences is similar to how I deal with cultural differences: when I interact with people, I interact with them according to my default set of assumptions on how they are supposed to behave. If I develop negative impressions ("Gee, this person is really an idiot;" "This kid is a total goon") I will back off and reevaluate based on gender and cultural information. Could I be evaluating this person as an idiot because they are not showing off their knowledge enough, or because they are showing off so much that I think they must not know anything? Do I think this person is a goon because they come from a background that values different things than what I value? (For instance, I may think someone is a total goon if when I try to talk about computer science all they talk about to me is "partying," "cute boys," or some other topic I find insipid, but this may be a result of their socialization.)

Secondly, I would like to point out that I have not done so badly as a woman in computer science. I mean, I continued doing computer science after I became somewhat unhappy with various aspects of it, including issues I had with the gender imbalance. I believe that I stuck with computer science perhaps because I had the all-female environment for many years for the following reasons:

1. Look at the facts? Many women drop computer science for various vague reasons like they feel like they can't handle it (which is often false) and other things. I am still doing computer science, I am still doing computer science as a graduate student, and I am still doing computer science at Big Bad MIT, which has not know to be particularly friendly to women.
   
2. From my high school experience I gained the confidence that I was not an idiot (like some fellow computer scientists often try to make me--and other peers--believe).
3. I did fine (and some may even say, excelled) academically, socially, and generally in my mostly male summer programs whiel attending my all-female high school. Therefore I do not believe my high school prevented me from learning to interact with males in an academic setting.
   

Dominance hierarchies, the inversions thereof, and whether women can afford to be nice

Derek, a very tall, bearded graduate student on my floor, inverts dominance relationships for fun:

1. He has some sort of masters' student working with him whom he enjoys calling his "boss" and
2. he will lay down on the ground when babysitting small children so the children are taller. He explains that he does this because he is a big guy and all still understand that he is dominant.

When he told me about this practice, I marvelled at the genius of the idea and was quite excited to try it out. Unfortunately, several people told me that this may not work so well for me.

"But wouldn't my acting subordinant make people think that I was inverting the dominance relationship and, in doing so, establish my dominance?"

Apparently not. I was told that since I am a "small Asian girl," my dominance is not taken as a given, and the best I could hope for is dragon lady*.

We can infer a few stylized facts from this anecdote:

• Dominance is something that some people (perhaps men?) establish and/or reference in interactions not only with peers, but with non-peers (such as small children).
• The establishment of dominance is such a recognized/accepted/overused gesture that the absence thereof can signal dominance. (An analogous situation in presentation of wealth: tasteful concealment of wealth connotes greater wealth than an ostentatious display, which labels the offender as nouveau riche.)
• The dominance of petite Asian women is not taken as given and therefore people of this type cannot take advantage of negative signalling.
  

I bring up this story because I have recently been thinking about gendered "cultural" differences and their role in the success of women in computer science. In a recent post, I discussed a theory on the male model of dominance vs. the female model of cooperation and how this impacts the way women are viewed in the heavily male-populated field of computer science. I was discussing this with a very successful female computer scientist, who wondered if she would have been as successful if she had not taken such a "hardass approach" to certain things. She posed the questions of whether women in male-majority fields are required to actively establish dominance and whether this is a good thing.

The Derek story and other experiences have convinced me that as a petite Asian woman, it is important for me to actively establish some sort as dominance so as not to be forced into a subordinant position. That is, in order to interact on the same level with many of my peers I must first signal that I am competent and not going to tolerant shit. I conclude that I personally, for some reason or other, need this active reestablishment of dominance for "success," and I deem this to be a good thing because currently the entire world (not just the field of computer science) judges Things That Matter To Society (intelligence, worth, etc.) by "male" standards**.

Note: I think it is complete bullshit that the world is this way, but as far as whether it is bad that computer science judges women by men's standards my answer is no, since in this case my chosen calling forces me to develop skills that will earn, in expectation, greater respect by The People Who Matter To My General Success.

Small Asian girls sleep a lot (false) and it is getting close to my bedtime (true), so I will wrap up this post with some additional analysis:

• Asian cultural things don't help when being judge on the "dominance scale." Humility, modesty, and general deference seem to "reveal" incompetence, insecurity, and other things that do not cause people to achieve success. After changing these behaviors, however, I was still told that I could only hope to pull off "dragon lady," so it is likely that 1) people associate Asians with these qualities and/or 2) being petite and being a woman are condemning traits.
  
• Being petite definitely contributes to difficulty in establishing dominance. Since I have no experience as a a tall woman, I do not have much else to say about this.
• After I got my hair cut very short I felt like I was taken more seriously, but this may have been psychological. An explanation for why this may have been so is that people have strong priors about Young Asian Women With Shoulder Length Hair (of which there are many) and few priors about Asian women with the very short Jean Seberg A bout de souffle haircut (and variations thereof).
  

*A reference to Jeannette Wing, Asian female professor of computer science and some big something-or-other at the National Science Foundation.

**According to Deborah Tannen, across all societies it is the male mode of whatever that is valued higher. For instance, in societies where men use an indirect way of speaking and women are more direct the men are considered more talented and refined and the women are considered crude. Women never win. Oh, and this is more evidence that the dominance-criteria is "male" rather than "objective," "good," or anything else like that.

Republican military men on John McCain

Republican military men discuss how McCain is hotheaded and "not a peacetime president." Pundits and people who know things about the army discuss how McCain would likely cause us to bomb Iran and how this would be a terrible thing for America. (From the video: we would awaken the "nuclear genie;" pick which American city you want destroyed because they will destroy at least one.)

It is a very well done video. Stop the insanity!

Gender balanced environments: harmful?

I arrived at Harvard after seven years at an all-female school and many years of mostly-male computer science summer programs. During freshman year, I would often joke to my roommates that the gender-balanced community was too much of a culture shock to me: perhaps I should transfer to either Wellesley (an all-girls school) or MIT (which has a 60/40 male/female ratio). This made little sense to my roommates, but I finally have an explanation of why the near 50/50 gender balance made Harvard difficult to navigate: as a woman in the most gender-imbalance department in the college (computer science), I found it difficult to develop a voice that suited me in my computer science life as well as the rest of my life. In this post I present the following point: women face a particular set of difficulties when they are in a male-majority field within a greater, gender-balanced community.

At the foundation of my argument is the idea that men and women in our society evaluate their same-gender peers in different ways*. While men tend to perceive conversation as ways of achieving dominance, women often view conversation as a way to cooperate. Georgetown linguist Deborah Tannen says that men tend to do more public speaking, or report-talk, while women tend to do more private speaking, or rapport-talk. According to Tannen, the dominance view causes many men to establish authority/competence in conversation and view modesty, qualifiers, and conversational deference as signs of insecurity or incompetence. The cooperation view causes women to hide their competence in favor of building trust and view displays of authority/talent as obnoxious. Tannen also writes about how groups of males tend to value talent in each other, targeting their criticism towards those deemed to be incompetent, while groups of females tend to have more group values, targeting their criticism towards those they deem to be singling themselves out.

If we take these descriptions to be true, then we can explain why it is difficult to interact as a woman in a male-majority environment within a gender-balanced community. In a male-majority environment, men evaluate women as they would other men, making it difficult for women to be as successful if they are modest and polite (i.e., wait for people to finish speaking before saying what they want to say, in which case they may never get to speak). In a gender-balanced community, women are judged by men by men's standards, by women by women's standards, and everyone by how well all people (men and women) judge them. Ideally, men and women adjust standards when the groups mix, so the problem comes from women having to be judge by men's standards while still having to interact with other women. In this case, women are pressured to single themselves out while risking ostracization by female peers.

It is my theory that coming from an all-female environment, I was particularly sensitive to the judgment of fellow women and so I was particularly careful to display modesty and politeness. This was particularly harmful to my desire to be listened to and taken seriously by my computer science peers, where I felt like people were always talking over me and telling things in a somewhat condescending manner. I hypothesize that this is because the computer science department was male-majority, my peers were accustomed to evaluating each other on a male rubric. Since I did not realize that interaction with my academic peers required different behaviors from my interaction with my other peers, I was often quite frustrated with not getting listened to, getting talked over, etc. (Harvard is actually dominated by Tannen's "male" style of interaction, so I was generally confused about how to behave.)

Epilogue: Things didn't actually turn out that bad for me, since I became angry/bitter/cynical/jaded/mean and become quite successful that way. I am now at MIT and love it because the 80/20 male/female ratio makes it so that there is no question that I can be as mean as I want and not be ostracized by the other women, who are usually not even around to see me be mean. Also, I am my advisor's first female graduate student so my group members don't even know that women are supposed to be ncie. As a result, I am as mean as I want and really enjoying myself at MIT. This is particularly liberating after 7 years of being nauseatingly un-mean at my girls school. And by "mean," I mean that I no longer care as much what people think.

*My evidence is from experience and from the book You Just Don't Understand, by Deborah Tannen. Though Tannen's book is somewhat stylized and generalizing, Tannen says many things that seem correct and relevant. One good thing she does is she does not make claims as to why things are the way they are; she merely states her findings.

**Side discussion: Who has it right? I was talking to a friend about how all-girls environments are tricky to navigate because people are ostracized for showing off too much, and the friend says this seems like total waste. I pointed out that the "male" manner of competing and displaying everything also breeds waste. (Think peacocks or other birds with lots of useless feathers that cause them to be eaten much more quickly.) Also, many people at my high school were competitive, but we mostly kept it secret and would only ever go as far to say we "competed with ourselves." ("Lorrie did 3 points better than me. Man, I really need to do 4 points better than myself next time.") I don't claim to have a stance on "who has it right;" I just want to point out that there are differences. Both sides involve a bunch of waste.

SMLNJ on 64-bit Ubuntu

I had some trouble with this but found a helpful link here.

Gloria Steinem on Sarah Palin

A feminist discusses her views on an anti-feminist here.

Also, regard the Women Against Sarah Palin page.

The lies of McCain/Palin

Krugman has a great piece about this.

Craigslist: An excellent way to purchase items

A few months ago, I purchased a piano on Craiglist. It's been almost three months now and the piano still works, so it is appropriate to share my story as evidence that Craigslist is a great way to make markets more free.

One day, I decided that I desired a piano. I went on Craiglist for about half an hour or so while at work and e-mailed various people about seeing their pianos, digital and otherwise. Towards the end of my search, I struck gold. Some guy was selling a Yamaha PF-80 digital piano with weighted keys and a sustain pedal for $300. This is a total steal, as the internet reports that used ones have sold for as high as $1500.

The piano acquisition story is as follows: I e-mailed the guy, we arranged a time for me to view the piano, and we arrived at the guy's apartment to discover that he had been using the thing as a TV stand. Apparently, he had a roommate who went to Berklee school of music who left the piano with him. The guy wouldn't take checks, so we drove to the bank and performed an exchange of cash for piano. The piano was incredibly dusty and required some cleaning before we could move it. It now sits in my apartment under a nice cover. It works fairly well except for the right speaker, which has been damaged some from the TV.

Anna Quindlen on Sarah Palin

Anna Quindlin has a great piece about the hypocrisy of the Republican party, the hypocrisy of Sarah Palin, and how Palin should be judged not as a woman but as a politician.

Sarah Palin: A Goon

For those of you who haven't heard, McCain has chosen for his running mate a former Alaska mayor of a town of 9,000 with two years of "real" political experience.

Frank Rich has a good piece about how the whole Palin affair is such a sham. He writes:
"We still don’t know a lot about Palin except that she’s better at delivering a speech than McCain and that she defends her own pregnant daughter’s right to privacy even as she would have the government intrude to police the reproductive choices of all other women. Most of the rest of the biography supplied by her and the McCain camp is fiction."

Jonathan Alter (who is sometimes also a goon) has written a nice piece in Newsweek, McCain's "Hail Sarah" Pass, about why he thinks Palin is a goon. He writes in apostrophe to McCain:
"Your campaign against Barack Obama is based on the simple idea that he is unready to be president. So you've picked a running mate who a year and a half ago was the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town of about 7,000 people. You've selected a potential leader of the free world who knows little or nothing about the major issues of the day beyond energy. Oh, and she's being probed in her state for abuse of power."

Krugman also has a piece about what he sees wrong with Palin's position:
"Can the vice-presidential candidate of a party that has controlled the White House, Congress or both for 26 of the past 28 years, a party that, Borg-like, assimilated much of the D.C. lobbying industry into itself — until Congress changed hands, high-paying lobbying jobs were reserved for loyal Republicans — really portray herself as running against the 'Washington elite'?"

A prototype for saving American education?

This past Newsweek ran this story on a Teach for America alum turned head of D.C. schools who has a plan to save the D.C. school district by changing the teaching profession from one dominated by teachers' unions and job security to a higher-paced one with incentives more in line with student achievement. She was hired (and is backed) by D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty, who says he will do whatever it takes to reform the school system.

This story is quite inspirational because Rhee's plan, if it succeeds, will do to D.C. schools exactly what the schools need for a makeover. Rhee and Fenty have somehow managed to take power from the teacher's union(s?) and school board to do things like firing 100+ non-union central office workers and 36 principals. Also part of the plan is a "probation" for teachers that involves observation for a year and can result in a salary of as much as $130,000 per year. This is much closer to what the American education needs than vouchers, No Child Left Behind, etc.

Below is the Newsweek header.

An Unlikely Gambler

By firing bad teachers and paying good ones six-figure salaries, Michelle Rhee just might save D.C.'s schools.

Ergonometry and relaxation

I have taken the last week away from computers due to a neck injury from last December. (My monitor was to the right and after a particularly long and difficult randomized algorithms take-home final I was left with a neck spasm/knot that I've gone through physical therapy to heal.) My injury shows that it is very important to have a good ergonomic setup! Thus, I am putting together the following things to help.

Ergonomic setup

• Having a good chair is very important! Considering companies pay thousands of dollars per chair, you should invest at least a couple hundred. My new floormate Derek Rayside recommended that I get this Zero Gravity chair, which was $180 and came with free shipping. He uses his computer while sitting at this and has his monitor mounted on an arm (which you can pick up at a computer accessors store such as MicroCenter in Cambridge).
• I discovered keyboards with built in mice. I haven't used mine yet, but I will let you know. (My arm gets tense sometimes from being outstretched all day.) People also seem to like Kinesis keyboards. At Google an ergonometrician (<-- I made up this word) came by and told me to type wiht my keyboard in my lap. I think this is a good idea.
• Monitor positioning is very important. The top of your monitor should be eye level.

Relaxation methods for once you develop some work-related injury

• Bikram yoga. This is the hot yoga, where the room is heated to 105 degrees to loosen all of your muscles, help you flush toxins, etc. It really gets your blood flowing, and important step in healing injuries. In another blog post I documented my first bikram yoga experience.
  
• Salt-water floatation. You float in concentrated salt water for about an hour. This is an anti-gravity experience that relieves a lot of tension--very good especially if you have spinal problems. It is also very relaxing in general.
• Massage. Harvard had subsidized massage for its undergraduates ($60 for an hour session). I discovered that I can still get the alumni rate of $70/hour. Massage is very good for relaxing you, but you have to remember to stay relaxed for the effects to last. The Bikram Yoga center in Harvard Square has hour-long (and half-hour long) massages at similar prices.
  

My masseuse said that lots of runners come in with neck injuries because 1) they don't think to stretch their necks and 2) running doesn't exactly loosen your neck. Be careful!

Appalling treatment of "illegal immigrant"

New York Times article Ill and in Pain, Detainee Dies in US Hands about a Hong Kong immigrant who became illegal after the US immigration process denied him legal status. This guy had been living in the US for 15 years, worked as a programmer, and had a wife and two US-born children. He was trying to become legal when officials decided to detain him. He got cancer so bad that his spine fractured but was denied treatment because they said he was "faking it."

Cyberattacks on Georgia

This article describes the cyberattacks on Georgia before the actual attacks began.  It is really cool to think about the importance of computers and good computer security!

CS Grad School Part 5: School Visits

You should begin hearing back from schools in February. I heard back from my first schools--Penn, UW, and Berkeley--on February 6. After asking around I conclude that they do not tell people at the same time, and when they tell people depends on when they decide to admit you and how much funding they have. I heard that how CMU (and probably other schools) do it is they admit the people they definitely know they can fund and then they wait to either hear about more funding to hear from students going to other schools before admitting other people.

School visits are usually in late February/March and are a great opportunity for visiting the campus, talking to professors, talking to grad students, and escaping your native climate. Schools will cover the expenses of these visits up to a certain amount (not guaranteed to cover all costs!), so it is important to book your tickets (and ask about accomodations) as soon as you hear from the schools. (Most schools reimburse you for booking your own tickets, and only CMU offered to do the booking for me.)

Some advice I have compiled about school visits:

• One of my professors told me to make a spreadsheet with qualities I'm looking for in each school, but one of my other professors told me that there is no good way to rationalize the decision so I should go with my gut feeling. I did the latter, mostly because I have never found spreadsheets to be useful and because I had a good idea of what I wanted in a school.
• You may not get a whole lot of time with professors, so it is good to look up some information on the school and the professors' work beforehand so you can ask informed questions.
• Not all professors you talk to expect that you have looked up their work etc. Given time constraints, focus on the professors you think you'll want to work with.

Overview of school visits. These are really fun times when you have scheduled time to meet with professors and current graduate students, you are given good food and drink, and you are generally shown a good time because the schools want to convince you to go there. This is a fun time in your life because it is likely that you'll run into other prospective grad students at more than one school and it's a little bit like one big traveling party.

The schools I visited, in chronological order of my visits:
University of Pennsylvania. UPenn has an extremely strong programming languages group of Benjamin Pierce, Stephanie Weirich, and Steve Zdancewic. They are also very good in things like computer vision and natural language processing (I am told). Their very-goodness is also a new development, as they acquired many Bell Labs (New Jersey) people when that disintegrated. The Penn visit involved many meetings with professors, a poster session, a nice dinner with professors and grad students, a bar crawl, an exclusive Frieda Kahlo exhibit, and probably other things. Penn might have been the only place where they had me meeting exclusively with professors (except MIT), and for a long time (half hour, hour?) each. Everyone was very nice and working on cool things. One of the main reasons I decided not to go there was because I wasn't ready to commit the rest of my life to the flavor of theoretical programming languages theyw ere do research they were doing there. (Penn, CMU, Harvard, and UW are the three places in the states where you'll find the theoretical, POPL/ICPF, theorem-proving kind of PL research.)

MIT. I loved MIT's visit weekend. The first day had various tours, then a dinner with the faculty, then things around Boston. The second day they had a representative sample of the faculty give three-minute long presentations and then allowed the rest of the day for meetings with professors. These were short (20 minutes?) and with a large number of professors. I liked MIT's atmosphere because it was quirky, fast-paced, and had a good sense of humor.

Stanford. Stanford has a much more corporate atmosphere than the other schools. Their research is very applied--people often start companies from the research. The professors were surprisingly nice and seemed to know my name before I got there, which is always a good sign. The grad students there seem like they are treated very well. The visit weekend also included a fun trampoline jumping event. Some of the reasons I chose not go to Stanford: it is very west-coast and corporate, there isn't much of a grad student presence on campus (people treat it like a job and often work from home), and I met a grad student who had done his undergrad at MIT and convinced me that I would love MIT.

Berkeley. Berkeley was the reason I applied to grad school, and during my visit weekend I concluded that Berkeley (the place) is indeed heaven on earth. UC Berkeley also had a great vibe, with its lush green campus and diverse student body. The professors there were also doing great PL research. The main reasons I didn't go to Berkeley was because I felt like MIT was a better personality fit--despite my love for California, I think I am more of an east-coast academic, whatever that means. I also felt like Berkeley's department was much bigger than MIT, probably because there is a lot of collaboration between professors. While this is the reason many people choose to go to Berkeley, I found MIT to be more personal for the reason that professors have their small empires which they tend to with care (in some situations).

UW. This was probably the most fun visit weekend because they are quite generous with the alcohol. (Other grad students I have met have said the same thing.) The grad students at UW seem very happy and to like what they are doing. Two reasons I did not go to UW: Seattle is really far north (and so there is very little light in the winter), and in terms of PL guys they only had Dan Grossman because Craig Chambers was on leave at Google.

CMU. I was very tired by this visit weekend and it was also close to the due date of my thesis, so I didn't spend very long here. Fortunately, I had grown up in Pittsburgh across the street from CMU so I know a bit about Pittsburgh and the area surrounding CMU. CMU has a great CS department; CMU is based around is department, which is an amazing thing if you are into that. CMU's PL group is also basically the department, which is like a candy store if you are a PL nerd. (Correction: I have since learned that the department has many more faculty than the impression I got when I visited. It has been brought to my attention that less than 15% of the faculty work on PL.) Despite this, the draw of CMU and its PL group did not outweigh my desire to not live in Pittsburgh anymore. (I had lived in Pittsburgh for thirteen years, from the ages of five to seventeen. It is a little small for me to return there anytime soon. It is, however, a great city because 1) it is great for raising small children and 2) the graduate stipend goes a long way because of lower costs of living.) Thus, I disappointed my advisor and did not choose CMU.

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This is one of my "applying to grad school" blog posts.

1. Deciding to Apply
2. Standardized Tests
3. Fellowships
4. Applications
5. School Visits
6. Some notes on picking grad schools/advisors
7. FAQ: Applying to Graduate School for Computer Science

You may also be interested in these blog posts I have written:

• Reasons to Pursue a Ph.D.
• The Life of an Academic, Explained
• How Science Really Works

CS Grad School Part 4: Applications

I applied to, and was admitted to, (in alphabetical order) Carnegie Mellon University, MIT, Stanford, University of California Berkeley, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Washington.

Applications tend to be due in December/January. It is important to figure out which applications are rolling. (I did not realize UPenn was rolling until I submitted the application. Applying earlier does give you an advantage in these situations, especially if you are concerned about your application. In the case of Penn, I believe you also find out earlier if you apply earlier.)

The three important parts of the application are the personal statement, the academic transcript, and the recommendations. How much each part matters depends on the person, but my take on it is: a strong personal statement can help a lot; a weak personal statement could hurt some; a strong transcript doesn't hurt; a weak transcript won't necessarily kill you; strong recommendations can get you in; weak recommendations will get you ignored.

Personal statement. This is what allows the admissions committee to see you as a person and picture you on their campus. (Also, by the time you apply the personal statement is the only thing you can spend a lot of time on, so you might as well. If nothing else, you should signal to the schools that you care enough about them to spend some time on your applications.)

I have posted my personal statement for CMU because I Texed it and it looks nice. (By the way, I believe fully in the power of presentation and recommend you Tex whatever you can whenever you can.)

I was given the following advice about writing my personal statement:

• Whoever reads it might be skimming, so make sure you have strong topic sentences for each paragraph and that you can read through each of them to get the full picture.
• In the same vein, get to the point quickly. Be concise.
• Make sure you explain:
• Why you want to be a grad student.
• Why you would make a good grad student, with supporting evidence from the facts of your life.
• What you want to do in grad school. Be clear enough so they can picture you doing whatever it is you want to do at their school.

In terms of how much you school-specific details you should include, it depends on how much you have to say about the school. One of my professors, Radhika Nagpal, told me that if you really want to go to a school and are excited about working with professors X, Y, and Z, you should say so. If you are applying to a school because you think it is nice but don't have that much to say, you do not have to say more than a sentence or two. The schools understand that you are applying to many schools (and possibly jobs as well) and they will also be competing with other things to get you as a student.

Transcript. If you are still early enough in your undergraduate career to do something about this, don't worry about your grades as much as the courses you take and how well you do in them. (Prof. Harchol's talk discusses why grades are less important than you might think.)

If there are rough patches in your transcripts, you should probably address them in your personal statement and ask your recommenders to explain them if they are in a position to do so.

Recommendations. These are also an important part of your application, as your recommenders vouch for what you say you can do in your personal statement. Most schools ask for three; schools receiving many applications (such as Berkeley) may limit the number of recs to three.

I was fortunate enough to have three recommenders who knew me well and are well-known in the CS community: Prof. Margo Seltzer, my former professor and academic advisor since freshman year, Prof. Greg Morrisett, my former professor and research advisor, and Prof. Radhika Nagpal, who taught me in two courses and who taught a course for which I was the teaching fellow. I was advised to get letters from non-Harvard professors, so I also asked Dr. Dennis Wall, for whom I worked as a computational biology research intern, and Dominic Mazzoni, with whom I worked at Google. When I was only permitted three recommendations, I asked Profs. Morrisett and Nagpal and Dr. Wall.

I had been given the following advice about selecting/asking for recommendations:

• Choose recommenders who can say useful things about you. Choosing a famous professor who doesn't know you isn't going to do much. However, it does help to choose professors who are known in your fields of interest. Talk to your advisor (and recommenders) to see who they suggest do your recommendations--they might know better than you who would write a better rec for you.
• Ask your recommenders well in advance (at least a month is optimal).
• Give your recommenders an idea of what you want them to say. Tell them what it is you are applying for, what qualities they are looking for (this is more relevant for fellowships, I guess), and what the rest of your application looks like. I tried to finish all of my essays a couple of weeks in advance to give my recommenders enough time to read them before writing my recs.

--
This is one of my "applying to grad school" blog posts.

1. Deciding to Apply
2. Standardized Tests
3. Fellowships
4. Applications
5. School Visits
6. Some notes on picking grad schools/advisors
7. FAQ: Applying to Graduate School for Computer Science

You may also be interested in these blog posts I have written:

• Reasons to Pursue a Ph.D.
• The Life of an Academic, Explained
• How Science Really Works

CS Grad School Part 3: Fellowships

I put fellowship applications before the actual applications themselves because the deadlines are sooner. You should figure out where you are applying for school, what you're applying for, and that kind of thing before you apply for fellowships. (The NSF and Hertz deadlines were in November when I applied in 2007.)

The reasons to apply to fellowships are as follows:

1. They provide an nice supplement to your graduate stipend.
2. Having a fellowship makes you more appealing to a potential advisor, who would otherwise have to fund you himself/herself.
3. The process of applying makes you think about what you want to do and forces you to get your act together for your actual school applications.
4. They look good on your CV.

Philip Guo has a nice summary of the three main fellowships available, the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF GRF), the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship (NDSEGF), and the Hertz Fellowship. The NSF, which provides a stipend of 30,000 a year for three years, is given to the most people and favors women and minority groups in fields in computer science. The NDSEGF is slightly more money, given to fewer people, and harder to get. The Hertz is the most money, given to the smallest number of people, and the hardest to get. :)

When I applied to graduate schools, I applied for all three fellowships and was awarded the NSF. I was declined for the NDSEGF and the Hertz, although I did get a second-round interview for the Hertz. I will write mostly about my NSF application, but I will also describe my Hertz interview because this information may be helpful for you.

NSF.  For the NSF fellowship, you are required to write a personal statement, a statement of research experience, and a research proposal for a project you would pursue in graduate school. I was given the very helpful advice that I should make my essays clear and concise, as the readers would likely to be skimming. My materials are below:

• Personal statement - I write about my life goals as they are relevant to my graduate pursuits and how I came to develop them.
• Research experience - this was fairly straight forward. One helpful editor told me to provide enough background for understanding each research experience.
• Proposed research - I described my undergraduate senior thesis. The project does not necessarily have to be a project you for sure plan to pursue in graduate school; you just need to show that you have thought about a large-scale project, the reasons for pursuing it, and what impact it may have. One good piece of advice I got was to make the problem as clear as possible as early as possible.

Hertz.  As my Hertz materials were quite similar, I will not post them. The Hertz fellowship is much more selective: you submit your paper materials for review in hopes of getting a second-round interview (given to 25% of applicants), the results of which get submitted as part of your file. If you make it past the second round interviews, they eat you. (I believe you might get another interview, and then perhaps the fellowship.)

The Hertz second-round interview is an hour long and with someone who has previously received the Hertz fellowship. My interviewer asked me about my experiences, peppering in questions to make sure I knew what I was talking about. My interviewer took me by surprise by asking me about protein folding--I was interviewing as a potential CS grad student, but I had done some research in computational biology. Other examples of fact-checking: when I said I liked compilers, my interviewer asked me to describe the compilation process, data structures involved, etc. The interview concluded with general questions (linear algebra, how would you tell apart jars of two different substances using kitchen supplies, etc.).

--
This is one of my "applying to grad school" blog posts.

1. Deciding to Apply
2. Standardized Tests
3. Fellowships
4. Applications
5. School Visits
6. Some notes on picking grad schools/advisors
7. FAQ: Applying to Graduate School for Computer Science

You may also be interested in these blog posts I have written:

• Reasons to Pursue a Ph.D.
• The Life of an Academic, Explained
• How Science Really Works

CS Grad School Part 2: Standardized Tests

The GRE, or the Great Required Exam, is what it sounds like--except not Great. For computer science grad students, the general test is required and the subject test is highly recommended.

General exam: As of the time I took the exam September 2007, the GRE general test had three parts: math, verbal, and analytical (in which you write a really short essay). It is generally a computer-based test, which means that during the math and verbal sections the questions you get depend on the questions you've answered correctly so far. It also means that you can't return to your previously answered questions. This is meant to throw you off, but if you are confident and prepared for such a test you should be fine. There are also paper versions of the GRE general test that are offered a couple of times a year and require registering years (probably months) in advance. I recommend sucking it up and taking the computer-based exam.

I don't have much to say about the content of the GRE general test, except:

1. Math matters,
2. Verbal doesn't matter, and
3. Writing may matter, but we are agnostic.

The math is SAT/high-school level math; if you are applying to a top CS school you should try to get an 800. Getting an 800 on the GRE is easier (in some senses) than getting an 800 on the SAT because they allow more wrong answers or something like that. The verbal score actually matters nothing, I believe, but I read through a vocabulary book because I hate doing poorly on things. (The vocabulary is quite a bit more advanced than that on the SAT, but the questions are the same structure. I spent 2-ish weeks going through a Kaplan vocabulary book and the corresponding exercises and got 750 out of 800.) The way I recommend preparing for this exam is acquiring a GRE book and going through a couple of practice exams to make sure you know what the test is about. When you register for the GRE they will send you a CD with a couple of practice exams. For this reason, I recommend registering early.

Subject test: A subject test in computer science, math, or physics is strongly recommended when applying to most top CS PhD programs. An important thing to note is that strongly recommended != required. I believe the only thing for which the score was required was for the National Department of Defense Fellowship, which is hard to get and which I didn't get. (This means that Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, UPenn, UW, CMU, and the NSF fellowship did not require it.) One of my professors, Radhika Nagpal, gave me this advice: look over a practice test and take the exam if you think you'll do well. You don't want schools to have anything to worry about, and a low score could cause them to worry. Following this advice, I didn't do a whole lot to prepare for the exam, took the exam, got an unsatisfactory score and withheld it from all schools except the one fellowship that required it. I ended up getting into all of my schools and getting the NSF fellowship, providing proof that the subject test score is actually not required.

I must note, however, I had the luxury of having recommenders who were known in the CS community and could vouch for the fact that I knew things. I think if you did not major in computer science, are coming from a less well-known institution, or have questionable grades your CS GRE score counts a lot more. The day before I took the exam, I discovered this study guide by a guy who did not major in computer science and felt like his subject test score of 800 convinced the admissions committees that he knew things. (I suggest taking a look at the study guide; I didn't discover it until far too late.)  NOTE: The questions on this study guide are, as some may put it, "unnecessarily evil."  You may find it helpful to Google actual past exams and look at those.  Most of those sorts of questions you can answer by doing arithmetic and thinking quickly.

--
This is one of my "applying to grad school" blog posts.

1. Deciding to Apply
2. Standardized Tests
3. Fellowships
4. Applications
5. School Visits
6. Some notes on picking grad schools/advisors
7. FAQ: Applying to Graduate School for Computer Science

You may also be interested in these blog posts I have written:

• Reasons to Pursue a Ph.D.
• The Life of an Academic, Explained
• How Science Really Works

CS Grad School Part 1: Deciding to Apply

As a result of talking to various people (/undergraduate seniors) who are figuring out what to do with their lives, I have made the arbitrary, unilateral decision that I will write a series of blog posts at you about how, why, where, etc. etc. etc. I applied to grad school.

Some more reliable resources. When I was applying I found it helpful to hear what other people who had applied had to say.

• Professor Harchol at CMU has a famous talk about who should apply to grad school, what to expect, etc. It is good to read for any undergraduate who thinks they might be interested in an academic career.
• Philip Guo, a grad student at Stanford, has a nice overview of what it means to be a graduate student, apply to graduate school, etc. He also discusses the application process.)

About me: I completed my undergraduate education in computer science at Harvard June 2008 and this fall (2008) I am starting a graduate program at MIT. I am interested in programming languages and compilers. My academic advisor was Prof. Margo Seltzer, my research advisor was Prof. Greg Morrisett.

DISCLAIMER: I may not have applied to grad school for the right reasons, but thus far I am happy. I may be happy because I have yet to begin my graduate program, but I can't predict the future and I have free time now, so...

Why I applied: Ever since I was a tiny Jean, I knew I wanted to do something when I grew up. Why this? Doing something was better than doing nothing, and committing myself to doing something didn't lock me down to a thing I might not like. Because of my short attention span, my one requirement was that the something was interesting. Sometime in early in my undergraduate career, this requirement alone led me to study computer science. Sometime later, the poor Boston climate contributed to the development of my goal to live in California. These two life requirements alone led me to spend a summer working at Google in Santa Monica. This was one of the more defining experiences of my life.

At Google, I realized the following, in order of importance:

1. I love California,
2. I love Google,
3. I am interested in making the world a better place by working on programming languages and tools, and
4. I should try to go to graduate school.

How I came to realize 1 is obvious. I loved Google because it was efficient, had badass programming tools, and because it had a very academic atmosphere where people were curious and loved what they worked on. I realized 3 because there were many times when I became frustrated with the current state of the art and had many discussions with my coworkers about it. (3 had been a developing passion for much of my life.) I realized 4 because my coworkers, most of whom had either gone to grad school and finished or gone to grad school and dropped out, all seemed to be of the opinion that graduate school was the place to go--and you can always drop out if you want to. These realizations, combined with my discovery that there was pretty awesome programming languages research going on at UC Berkeley, led me to develop the goal that I should continually apply to UC Berkeley until I was accepted, at which point I would drop everything and attend.

My decisions to apply to grad school and to apply to grad school right away (instead of working and then applying) were motivated by the following things:

1. For my interests in programming languages/tools, academia seems like a better place than grad school for doing exciting innovation. In industry, very few places get to spend a lot of time innovating their tools.
2. I didn't really want to spend the Rest of My Life working and doing the same thing day after day. Academia seems like a much more exciting place to be.
3. I had grown up pretty much at Carnegie Mellon University around a lot of CS grad students. Since that was all I knew, I probably figured I would become one someday.
4. GRE scores last for five years, so I figured I would take them while I was still in school.
5. I was in a good point in my life where I had professors who still remembered my name and a registrar's office still had a copy of my transcript with easy access. I figured that applying to grad school would at least get me to get these materials together.

My decision of which graduate schools to apply to was motivated by the following:

1. Because of my love of California and because of the cool research at Berkeley, I applied to UC Berkeley.
2. For similar reasons, I applied to Stanford.
3. Because MIT is cool, I applied to MIT.
4. Because CMU, Penn, and UW do cool languages research, I applied there as well. This was mostly because my advisor, Greg Morrisett, said it was a good idea. I tried to tell him that all I really wanted to do was to go to California, but he said I might change my mind once I visited the schools. (He was partially correct, but then again in any useful system that is the best you can do.)

I didn't apply anywhere else because these were the schools where I would consider going rather than going to Google. (I had a full-time offer from Google at the time I applied.) I didn't apply to any other companies because I was pretty happy with Google.

For reference, you may want to look at the US New rankings. The "top 4" CS grad schools are generally acknowledged to be MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, and CMU. UW follows just afterward, and then other schools (like UPenn) are known to be very good in specific subject areas. If you are very sure what you want to do, then it is good to go somewhere known to be good in that area, but if you are less certain it is better to go somewhere more generally good.

--
This is one of my "applying to grad school" blog posts.

1. Deciding to Apply
2. Standardized Tests
3. Fellowships
4. Applications
5. School Visits
6. Some notes on picking grad schools/advisors
7. FAQ: Applying to Graduate School for Computer Science

You may also be interested in these blog posts I have written:

• Reasons to Pursue a Ph.D.
• The Life of an Academic, Explained
• How Science Really Works

Dealing with Boston weather

Since I am poorly adapted for the severe New England climates, I have developed many coping mechanisms. I dedicate this post to my friend Gregor (Malecha/Samsa), who is relocating to Boston for graduate school and will likely die because he does not believe in coats.

A bit of explanation about Boston's climate: One might think that Boston would have a temperate climate because it is by the ocean, but no. Boston has an unfortunate climate because the winds are west-east rather than east-west. This makes it so that we get all the wonderful leftover extreme, uncalmed-by-ocean weather from mainland America rather than the mild, ocean-scented weather of a much more beautiful place like Santa Monica.

Summary of year-round weather: To properly deal with the winter, it is extremely important to invest in at least one good coat and one good fleece. The weather goes something like this: the summers are nice, averaging mid-80's and varying a lot. The fall is beautiful, usually involving a long Indian summer extending into October, a phenomenon that tricks you into believing that perhaps winter will not come. LIES. The cool late fall begins creeping in late October/November. December is when the colder cold begins to hit and people begin to expect snow. At this point the temperatures are probably in the 30's and 40's. The coldest cold comes at the end of January, when it is not surprising to have at least a week in the high teens and low 20's. Winter takes a long time to leave: in early March you might see temperatures in the 50's and 60's, but these usually happen for no more than a couple of days at the time. In April and May there is a lot of rain and short lengths of good days. It is not really consistently nice again until June, where the temperature is in the 70's and 80's and it is nice except for when it rains.

The year in clothing: in the summer it is good to have a light jacket or two and a raincoat. There are intense thunderstorms with extreme winds, so you probably want to invest in a sturdy umbrella as well. It is good to have rain boots all year round. A heavy pair of winter boots is also an excellent investment, especially if you plan to walk around. I recommend having a fleece/wind-proof fleece for the fall and as a general layering tool. A good down jacket is an excellent investment, but it is also important to have something wind-resistant to put over it, as Boston is one of the windiest cities in the US. (Wind makes cold feel much colder!) As for my coats, I have a wind-blocking fleece (North Face WindWall) that I wear in the spring/fall, a heavier fleece (North Face Denali), an extremely warm down jacket, and a two-piece jacket involving a windproof Gortex outer shell and a zip-in down inner thing (North Face Triclimate). I also have various pea coats and other things that look nicer but keep me less warm.

Non-coat cold protection: Very important! Get a good hat and gloves. A scarf also helps a bunch. Layering under coats is also extremely important! Long underwear is a good idea. On very cold days I wear long underwear under my pants, but my roommate Aliza and I are the only people I know who are really into this. Fleece pullovers are also a great layering tool.

Running outside: You might also be wondering about what to wear if you are a runner and don't mind inclement weather. In the winter I usually run in spandex leggings, a turtleneck, and maybe a wind-blocking jacket/pullover. I also have a pair of not-great running gloves and a hat. (My roommate Brigit, who has better gear in general, has an amazing pair of wind-proof running gloves of the kind that I am too cheap to buy.) This tends to keep me warm enough. When I used to run outside when it was in the 20's I used to layer long underwear under a pair of wind-blocking pants, but I have since renounced such acts of extreme masochism.

WARNING: If you are moving to Boston, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE WARM CLOTHES NOW! I recommend looking online for good deals on high-quality jackets, since when it comes to protection against the cold, quality (and quantity) make quite a difference. I get a lot of my weather-protection gear at Eastern Mountain Sports.

Boston's redeeming qualities: Why live in Boston then, you might ask. Most of the reasons are unrelated to weather. There are a few weather-related reasons: the summers are beautiful, the extreme weather makes the sky really beautiful much of the time, and there is really good snow for people who are into that kind of thing.

Note: Clearly Boston has a few redeeming qualities, as I am staying here indefinitely for graduate school after suffering through four years of awful weather and consequent infirmities as an undergraduate.

Harvard freshman seminars

I have decided to begin posting things to my blog that I write in response to people asking about academic advice.  The first of these posts is about freshman seminars at Harvard, which are small classes with limited enrollment open to Harvard freshmen.  These courses tend to be on specialized topics and provide freshmen with a great opportunity to explore a subject of interest and to get to know a professor and fellow classmates better.

The following things are important about freshman seminars:

1. They are very small. Mine only had 6 people, I believe.
2. Many of them are not very much work and a fun way to get acquainted with a subject in which you have great interest but see it as only marginally related to your intended feel of concentration.
3. Most of them are interesting and a great way to go deeper in some area.

I took a freshman seminar with Professor Stuart Shieber on the Turing Test and the philosophy of thinking machines, which is somewhat related to my interests in computer science. It was good for getting to know the professor and other people (especially other CS concentrators) and also for exploring some interesting topics. I didn't love my seminar, but I'm glad I took it.

As for whether you should take a seminar, for most purposes the answer is yes. At a place like Harvard where it is quite possible that many of your freshman courses are large lecture courses, having a small class is a huge plus*. This is because you will probably get to know your professor well, which is good in general and because for many summer programs you will need references and/or letters of recommendation. You will also get to know the fellow students well.

As to what kind of seminar you should take, it really depends on 1) what seminars interest you, 2) the rest of your schedule, and 3) what you want to do with your semester. Past experience should matter very little--it might give you an easier semester if you take a course on a topic with which you already have some familiarity, but all that's probably going to do is give you a light first three weeks. Past that I don't think past experience matters a whole lot for most things, since you'll probably do different things with the material than you have had experience with in high school. (For the same reason, don't worry about having less experience than other students.)

Re 1): The most important thing about a seminar is that you find it interesting because that is, in my opinion, the whole point of taking a freshman seminar. (A really good thing to do is look through the CUE guide and prioritize seminars with professors who are known to be good professors. You will likely have a much more pleasant seminar experience and become much more inspired. I would recommend against taking a seminar with a professor who receives below-4.0 CUE ratings.) Re 2) and 3): Another important thing a seminar can do is balance out your schedule. You don't want too many classes that do the same sort of things. I don't think this applies to you as much, but for instance if you are taking three science courses on semester taking a non-science seminar would be a good idea.

Bikram Yoga!

Today I tried Bikram Yoga for the first time at the center in Harvard Square. It was really great!

Bikram yoga involves doing various stretches in a room heated at 105 degrees. The heat is amazing because it really loosens up your muscles. I think it also makes your body burn calorie at a much higher rate. (I looked this up, and doing 1.5 hours of Bikram yoga is supposed to burn 700+ calories as opposed to an hourish of running, which burns less than 600.) Anyway, you stretch like every muscle that you have a sweat a ton so you feel like you might die but also that you are "cleaning yourself out from the inside," as the instructor said. It's also as intense as you make it--you can get a great workout by really pushing yourself or an okay workout by doing moderate stretching.

(The demographics of the people who went to the noon session were a bunch of normal, healthy-looking people. There were no muscle-super-gods/goddesses and the people who were best at the "postures" were the normal to overweight ones. This is an exercise for the masses.)

If you do it, I recommend a lot of hydration beforehand.

Immigrants Facing Deportation in American Hospitals

A man is sent back to Guatemala after American hospitals decide they can no longer afford to rehabilitate him after he is injured by a drunk driver in Florida.  Apparently many illegal immigrants are deported while hospitalized and incapacitated.  Read the article here.

This exposes some of the many things wrong with the health care system and how the government deals with immigration.  While American hospitals' first priorities should certainly to be to help American citizens reach some basic standard of health, hospitals should not have to shoulder the burden put upon them by illegal immigrants.  The government should not allow such things to happen, which they can do by making it easier for illegal immigrants to become legal.  Forcing these immigrants to remain illegal creates the situation where these people cannot seek regular medical care and must rely instead on extremely expensive emergency care.   I believe this is responsible for much of hospitals' (and Americans') belief that illegal immigrants are a heavy burden on the medical system.

Of course, this article doesn't really support this point, as it discusses an extreme case that couldn't be prevented, but I felt like it provided a good opportunity to bring up these issues.

Women in Science

In reading more about views on women and various measures to increase the numbers of women who choose to pursue careers in science, I have discovered a strange world of antifeminists according to my definition of feminism.  I present to you the following reading materials:

• A New Frontier for Title IX: Science - the NY Times talks about plans to have gender balancing requirements for math/science.  While there are many ways to improve the education system to increase male and female interest in science from an early age, the government wants to spend its time artificially increasing numbers of women in science with requirements?  Not only is this a waste of time, it could cause much harm by increasing societal perceptions of women as somehow lacking what it takes to have natural interest/aptitude.
  
• The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women, and the Real Gender Gap - Susan Pinker discusses how the assumption that a female is a kind of male is wrong. She also says that women are less "extreme" than men when it comes to deviating from the norm. She provides a preview of an interesting, well-presented argument with which I don't entirely agree.  While I agree that women have clear biological differences from men (no one who believes in science will object to the statement that male and female brains develop in wildly different environments), I think Pinker makes strong assumptions about the differences between men and women and presents them as fact.  She doesn't really address how these cultural norms arose and other societal reasons for the existence of these differences. 
  
• The freeom to say 'no' - an article presenting results on how there are not more women in science/engineering because they are just not interested. I am not surprised, but I think it is good to ask why more women are not interested in math/science.  While some of it may be biological, much of it is societal.  We should take the results of such studies in mind when trying to increase the numbers of women in computer science.  The findings here support my view that the ex post facto patches of making it easier for female professors to get research funding does more harm than it does good.  The women who end up in academic professions are not the ones who need help; if we wanted to increase numbers we should be focusing on changing the views of younger women and the people who influence them.
  
• Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Man? - Hoff Sommers discusses the proposals to apply Title IX to science.  While I agree with her that this is a terrible idea, Hoff Sommers seems to have internalized the views that women have certain qualities associated with them ("cooperative rather than competitive," etc.) that makes them inherently worse at science.  First of all, while these stereotypes do have biological backing it is as foolish to assume a woman is cooperative as it is to assume an Asian is short.  Secondly, even if women were a threat to these "competitive environments," Hoff Sommers is making a very strong assumption that the competitive way is the best way.
  

Some articles from the entire summer

I forgot that I had a blog that nobody reads.  I apologize; it is very easy to neglect such a small (or nonexistent?) readership.  Here are some articles from the entire summer and some brief commentary:

• With No Frills or Tuition, a College Draws Notice - about a school in the Appalachian that charges no tuition and has students do very classic-American-dream things like farming.  A very good idea.  The Amherst guy they quote is a total goon: what they do is a great idea, but we don't need to do the same thing because all of our students come from wealthy families.  Um, think much?
• So Popular and So Spineless - if I stooped to his level and declared logical bankruptcy, I would say that this article proves definitively that Thomas Friedman is a sensationalist goon.
  
• Pope Warns on Environment - the Pope agrees that contributing to global warming is sinful.
• 36 Hours in Pittsburgh - Pittsburgh is cool.
  

Beware the Longfellow!

Watch this news video to learn why maintenance on the Longfellow Bridge in Boston has slowed the subway.  Apparently the federal government has deemed the bridge too dangerous for travelling and at high risk of collapse, but the state government says it is okay.  The state compromised, however, by requiring the train to go slowly to minimize injuries when the train does derail.  A further precautionary measure is that the left lane of the bridge has been shut down because they think it might fall off the bridge.  Therefore we should feel safer that when the train does derail, it could derail onto the empty left lane, slowing its fall into the Charles River.

We should not worry so much, however, because the state government has repairmen on the bridge day and night!  This is the state's signal to us that they care about us enough to sacrifice some fraction for a repairman for each person who falls into the river when the train derails.

Memorization might be good for you

This article suggests that the ability to solve new problems can be improved by training one's memory.

Hillary Gets No Respect

Kristol's article here.

Passover cooking

My favorite holiday is coming up! See here for an article on a chef who has written several Kosher cookbooks.

Illustrated BMI

I thought this was interesting. It has photographs of women with their weight and body mass index. Some comments:

• I believe the purpose of this (or the purpose of links to this) was to show that "normal" is thin, "overweight" is normal, etc. Might also be a sign that America is becoming accustomed to seeing people of unhealthy weights. (When I go to foreign places--like France and LA--I am always shocked to realize that I am not nearly as thin as I thought I was...)
  
• How is BMI being measured here? If you did a ratio of weight/height or something like that, that's not good enough because you don't factor in muscle mass. Not stating how BMI is measured makes pictures like "____ is 'overweight'--and a triathlete" less convincing...
  

Some things I learned as an undergraduate

I have always wanted to put up list like this to 1) reflect on how my undergraduate education has been good for my character development and 2) convey what I've learned to others (in particular, people who are younger). Below is an incomplete list of what I have learned in my almost-four years as an undergraduate in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1. Weather matters. Not saying you should choose where you go to school based on the weather, but especially if you go to school where there is a big campus you will probably walk around outside much more than you are used to. This is something to take into account when envisioning your life as a college student and when planning your wardrobe.
   
2. Getting sick is much worse when you are responsible for making up class, homework, etc. and you might not have people to take care of you. Dress warmly, eat well, and exercise.
3. Getting enough sleep is vital for productivity. Having so much homework that you cannot get enough sleep to do a good job or procrastinating such that you have to continually lose sleep to do assignments will degrade the quality of your work and thus the quality of your education.
   
4. If you go somewhere rainy, galoshes (rain boots) are an excellent investment.
   
5. If you go somewhere cold, invest in a good coat. It took me a long time to learn that wind resistance is orthogonal to warmth of coat. If you go to school in Boston, make sure your coat is not only the warmest in the store but also wind resistant.
6. Acquiring a humidifier is also a good idea. Dry air compromises your immune system.
   
7. Whether you go to the library is orthogonal to how productive you are. You shouldn't allow yourself to feel productive just because you got yourself to the library. (Doing this may be counterproductive.)
8. That said, it is a good idea to figure out where you study best. This is different for different people--I prefer my room because it is quiet and there are no distractions; other people prefer the dining hall for its ambient noise.
9. It is important to have an ergonomic setup. I got a neck strain from having a poor ergonomic setup with my computer monitor--I am still healing after 4+ months. Since then, I've invested in a better chair and a footrest.
10. There will probably be many people with different goals in life and different ideas of the social hierarchy. Getting caught up with a a group of people who share a single set of goals (and corresponding idea of the social structure) might limit your character development.
11. Don't assume people know what they are talking about just be because they sound like they do. The smartest people are often not the most confident ones.
12. Having too much of an ego will get in the way, but having a healthy amount of ego is important.  Thinking you can't do things is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
    
13. Paying attention in lecture might save you some time later (from reading the book, from being confused, etc.), since professors tend to ask questions related to their way of presenting the material.
14. Get a credit card if you think you can be responsible about it. Having a good credit score will be useful for taking out loans later in life, and you can't have a good credit score if they don't know anything about you.
    

Monads and Saint Augustine

I know the term "monad" has meanings other than the Haskell meaning, but I was nonetheless excited to come across "monad" in St. Augustine's Confessions:

"I distinguished between the unity there is in virtue and the discord there is in vice. I conceived that the unity consisted of the rational soul and the nature of truth and the highest good. But I imagined that in the disunity there was some kind of substance of irrational life and some kind of entity in the supreme evil. This evil I thought was not only a substance but real life as well, and yet I believe that it did not come from you, my god, from whom are all things. And the first I called a monad, as if it were a soul without sex. The other I called a dyad, which showed itself in deeds of violence, in deeds of passion and lust--but I did not know what I was talking about. For I had not understood nor had I been taught that evil is not a substance at all and that our soul is not that supreme and unchangeable good." [4.25.24]

Some definitions:
monad - from "Whatis.com"

2) A kind of constructor used in functional programming to structure programs that include sequenced operations. The primary use of monads in this context is to express input/output (I/O) operations without using language features. In general, however, monads are useful whenever a programmer wants to perform a purely functional computation separate from a related computation performed apart from it.

4) A symbol used by ancient Greek philosophers, including Plato, Pythagoras and Aristotle, to describe God or the totality of all beings. Metaphysical and theological theory describes "monism" as the concept of "one essence."

dyad - Greek philosopher's principle of "twoness" or "otherness"