Jul 142009
 

Life moves too quickly.

A few weeks ago, I graduated, and moved off campus to a five bedroom house with a few friends. Sarah also got two kittens.

Here’s Ada, the girl.

And here’s Babbage, the boy.

Here’s a virtual tour of the house:

(These pictures were taken two weeks ago, so there’s more furniture in the house now, and things the spaces are much more cleaned up!)

What you see when you first walk in the door:

Looking to the right, the living room. The biggest differences now between the picture and real life are (1) there’s a couch behind the bean bag, and (2) there’s a speaker system set up on the mantle and the little entertainment table.

The kitchen! It’s blue!

Our garage turned game room. This room has also been significantly cleaned up.

And along the side of the house is lots of space and a storage shed!

The backyard. Notice the palm tree on the right edge! There is also a plum tree and a nectarine tree in the backyard!

My room:

Jul 122009
 

Year: 2008

This is the version from their first LP, “The Rhumb Line,” but a longer version also appears on their “Ra Ra Riot EP.” I saw them last night opening before Andrew Bird, and they made me more excited than I have been for a long time. The band members obviously know each other very well and have this casual, but intense bond the entire time, and are all so absorbed in the music the entire time. And the electric violin and cello (!) were incredible, adding this sonorous layer to the whole band’s sound. They will transport you away.

May 312009
 

Year: 2008

From their album “Intimacy.” I went to the Bloc Party a few weeks ago, and realized how hopelessly far behind I was on their music. There I was, thinking every other song would be from Silent Alarm, or one of the few singles I’d heard from their two latest albums, “Intimacy,” and “A Weekend in the City,” when most of their songs were from one of those two. And they were good. Bloc Party has this uncanny ability to use electronica elements, but keep the raw energy of their music alive with Kele’s soulful vocals and Matt Tong’s spirited drumming.

May 132009
 

I am now in the midst of hiring the next class of Stanford CS106 section leaders for the fall quarter. Section leaders (SLs) here at Stanford are typically undergraduates (and occasionally graduate students) who teach a small section of a larger lecture class. These classes often also have a head TA who will help coordinate the high-level academic aspects of the class.

CS106 is Stanford’s introductory computer science sequence, and includes CS106A, CS106B, CS106X, and CS106L. The enrollment is so high that we now maintain an active pool of around 60-80 SLs who will teach every quarter. The entire teaching program even gets its own course designation: CS198. You can read more about the semi-complex structure of the teaching program on the CS198 web site.

I am one of the co-coordinators of the CS198 program, and as such am responsible for hiring SLs to try to maintain an appropriate number of staff every quarter. Most SLs return quarter after quarter, so we only typically hire between 10-15 now per quarter out of a pool of around 80 applicants.

This puts me in an interesting position. Stanford’s CS department has around 4 men for every woman. [Please correct me if this statistic is incorrect or outdated.] Many of the students who go into Computer Science, especially girls, cite the CS106 courses, and especially their amazing section leaders, as their initial impetus to pursue the subject. Many women especially see female SLs as role models in their pursuit in a field so dominated by men, and with a culture so defined by men. So, an obvious question is, should I pursue a policy of affirmative action?

I have always been completely supportive of efforts to fill in the gender gap in engineering, but have always been against affirmative action in hiring, admissions, and other similar decisions. The main problem is that the affirmative action can cause the fallacy that women are bad at computer science to become a self-fulfilling prophecy much too easily. Imagine an admissions scenario. A woman is accepted to fill some gender ratio quota, whether implicit or explicit, but otherwise would not have been accepted. She may do well, but statistically, she will likely do worse than her male peers. Then, the proportion of women in the program doing badly will be greater than the proportion of men doing badly, and this gets noticed by people both within and outside the program. The prophecy is fulfilled.

Yes, I know the whole argument of affirmative action is that, if you believe it, if we give many women a chance, some will overcome the barriers and encourage other women to pursue the field. But realistically, unqualified women will just reinforce the gender fallacy, and successful women will inspire, but successful men will inspire as well, and overall, affirmative action does more harm than good. What we really need is something that is much more difficult to implement than a quota. We need to change the culture surrounding engineering, as well as to encourage those women with high potential to pursue engineering.

This is what I am doing now in hiring. The final hiring standard for both sexes are exactly the same, but during the application period, I try especially hard to seek out women who would make great section leaders and encourage them to apply through personal emails, and even allow slightly longer extensions on the application. But, once past the application stage, the entire interview and decision process is gender-blind.

Using this strategy, the ratio at the final round of interviews last quarter was almost 50%, and the final pool of SLs hired was 30% female. We hope that this quarter, we can push even closer to breaking that 50% mark.

May 102009
 

Year: 2009

From their EP “The Open Door.” Most of the songs here were cuts made from Narrow Stairs that Death Cab decided did not fit with the sound and mood of Narrow Stairs. This is my favorite song from the album, definitely beating out the single they released, the first track “Little Bribes.” All the songs on the album are pretty spectacular though, so check out the album if you haven’t already.

May 042009
 

I have always been against teachers’ unions. If you do form a teachers’ union, it should be formed around the mission of education rather than blindly protecting jobs. This article makes me sick.

Teaching jobs and pay should be merit based. Public school districts and their teachers have always bemoaned the fact that that lacks equality and oversight and is difficult to assign merit accurately, but please, just suck it up. The best teachers will almost always be recognized, and rewarded under a merit-based system. True, some teachers, good and bad, will slip through the system, but that system sounds much better than the current system in many districts where bad teachers stay for years, and good teachers lose interest because they are only paid by seniority and gain no more resources or influence even after years of inspirational teaching.

Apr 302009
 

About a week ago, I, along with some friends, read a shocking article in the SF Chronicle detailing a plan by the Contra Costa County DA to stop prosecuting misdemeanors and certain drug felonies. To quote the article, “People who are suspected of misdemeanor drug crimes, break minor traffic laws, shoplift, trespass or commit misdemeanor vandalism will also be in the clear,” but that “prosecutors will still consider charging suspects with certain misdemeanors, including domestic violence, driving under the influence, firearms offenses, vehicular manslaughter, sex crimes and assault with a deadly weapon.” The full article is here.

Hey criminal breathren, want a new hard drive? Go to Contra Costa County’s Best Buy and steal one! You won’t be prosecuted! Hey rapists, want to grope people? Go to Contra Costa County! If it’s not too egregious, no one will prosecute you! Need a place to stay? Just sleep on any private property in Contra Costa County! The police won’t prosecute you for trespassing!

You get the idea.

Of course, we were skeptical when we read this. No DA in his/her right mind would do this. Yet, this was an article in the Chronicle. They wouldn’t even do this on April Fools Day. I later checked Google News for more news, and found that this was indeed, shockingly, true.

I checked for updates on the situation every few days to see how the major public outcry would affect the DA’s decision, and to see if Contra Costa County would spiral down to what may be later referred to euphemistically in the history books as “America’s Dystopian Experiment of the Economic Crisis of 2009.”

Fortunately, as another Chronicle article (and many other sources) later reported, this was all a huge bluff that DA Robert Kochly engineered to force the Board of Supervisors and the general public to recognize law enforcement’s need for a basic level of funding, even during economic downturns.

I do feel sympathetic for Kochly and his strained organization.