The Original Mr. Blaurb

Sometimes I feel like this...

2007-03-04T16:05:00.000-08:00

Yet another internet video...

2006-03-14T23:25:00.000-08:00

Found another classic internet video on Youtube. Enjoy!

Visit weekend for the prospectives

2006-03-13T22:31:00.000-08:00

We just had visit weekend for prospective first-year PhD students in Bioengineering at UCSD, and I must say that the weekend really is a nice annual event (except for the extremely bad weather) that is almost Christmas-like in how it forces all of us in the department to think about the year we've had, and almost New-Year-like in how it makes us reflect on the program as a whole and think about changes to be made for the future.

As a first-year myself, it has allowed me to look back at my decision to come to UCSD, and I'm happy to say that I made the right decision. San Diego has more of the elements I was looking in a top-notch program, like a structured curriculum, excellent research and medical affiliations, and had the bonuses of promoting cameraderie with other first-year PhD students, excellent weather, and Jen, of course!

Now to just pass quals and settle into a lab...

Thanks, Blaurb

2006-02-17T17:28:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Blaurb for the resolutions! I look forward to the lattes in the morning. Well I'm back again for a post. Things have been pretty ho-hum for me these days, as I spend them being a T.A. and a graduate student here at UCSD. I think I have decided I want to start a book club here. As a grad student, I really spend very little time reading books for leisure (not that I was ever really a heavy reader), and my stack of books I want to read has gotten larger and larger ever since I got here. I guess a book club for my fellow first years will have to wait until after quals though, which comes around in May, I believe. Anyways, here are selections from my own personal book list, that I hope I will be able to read sometime in the near future:

- The Search by John Batelle (essentially a biography of Google)
- The Universe in a Single Atom: the Convergence of Science and Spirituality by the Dalai Lama
- The Essays of Warren Buffet: Lessons for Corporate America
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
- The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman
- The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
- Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
- On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins

Alas, I probably won't get through this list before 2007 rolls around, but maybe. Perhaps that shall me one of my real resolutions. =)

On an entirely separate note, I came across some hilarious Brokeback Mountain parodies, and here are some links:

And an old favorite, found while browsing YouTube.com,

my new resolutions

2006-02-07T18:28:00.000-08:00

here are things that i will do in order to improve my life. i am recording these so that you all can hold me accountable to them.

1) stop laughing like a maniac who has lost his mind
2) give jen a massage every day
3) cook yummy food
4) make lattes
5) remember to transfer $200 into jen's account every week for her allowance
6) stop talking about poo and farting
7) learn that it's not polite to point and laugh at people who are doing you a service by writing a blog entry for you
8) update my blog at least once every three days

thank you that's all.

For the guy who has everything...

2006-01-26T10:11:00.000-08:00

This will be a ho-hum post. Sorry! I've actually decided that my blog will be my digital identity, so not only will I talk about the goings-on of my life, I may throw in tidbits from my past that illustrate things I generally believe in. Maybe my blog is schizo. I keep changing it.

So, blaurb asks me yesterday what I would like for my birthday, which is coming up, and honestly, it took me a long time to think of something I want. I'm a very difficult person to buy gifts for, I realize now. I suppose the reason for that is because in my mind I associate things with a personal value. I ask, "how valuable would this be to me?" If something has a justifiable value to me (it will make me more productive, etc.) I will usually buy it. This of course means I have pretty much everything I want, right?

What about experiences, you say? Yes, the gift of some sort of experience (skydiving, dinner, etc.) is typically a good alternative for the guy who has everything. If I were to nitpick though, such gifts typically require an investment of time that I may or may not want to invest, because frankly, I may have other things I'd rather do (This is why video games would not be a good gift, because I have better things to do than waste my life on video games).

How about the gift certificate? This is a clever option, as it allows me to pick and choose at my own leisure, but it does lack that element of thoughtfulness and care that is embodied in an all-out gift, you know?

Back to Posting!

2006-01-19T10:32:00.000-08:00

I guess I'm starting to have things to say again. For example, I have built my own Personal Video Recorder (Tivo) with a leftover computer of mine, and it is functioning beautifully, allowing me to watch TV on my own time. I must admit, I have a weakness for TV. TV draws me in, and it sucks my time away, and I know it, but I can't stop. I think it's very much like an addiction.

When I was younger, in elementary school, I probably watched about 7 hours of television every day, starting at 3PM when I got home (invariably to watch the Disney afternoon) all the way through Saved by the Bell, the local news, through Prime Time and all the way until the nightly newscast. I would then start doing my homework, or possibly sleep, and then do my homework before class started the day it was due. What is it about television that makes me watch so incessantly? Is it because I grew up with such monstrous tv-watching habits? Has my brain been programmed to accept passive television entertainment as its lowest-energy resting state? Or perhaps is isn't a function of my environment, and perhaps it is my attention-deficit-disorder seeking out an appropriate medium to supply the constant stimulus it craves. Once again, it's the tried-and-true nature vs. nurture question, rearing its ugly head.

hello again

2005-12-21T21:42:00.000-08:00

Andreson Cooper is Awesome

2005-09-12T15:14:00.000-07:00

This excerpt is awesome, from NYTimes about Anderson Cooper, anchor for CNN.

Mr. Cooper's Sept. 1 interview with Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, marked a turning point in the tone of hurricane coverage as he snapped when she began thanking federal officials for their recovery efforts.

"Excuse me, Senator, I'm sorry for interrupting," Mr. Cooper interjected. "I haven't heard that, because, for the last four days, I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated.

"And when they hear politicians slap - you know, thanking one another, it just, you know, it kind of cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours."

The Environment

2005-09-08T07:27:00.000-07:00

I had this thought a while ago, before this blog, but I would like to make my prediction now, just for the record. I think it was about 6 months ago, when there were early reports of conservative Republicans representing the Christian Coalition advocating the protection of the earth and its environment, because the Bible asks that humans be good stewards and take care of what God has given to us.

For me this was a turning point in politics waiting to happen. The growing concerns over oil in the Middle East, the diminishing supplies of oil worldwide, and global warming becoming a scientifically confirmed phenomenon convinced me that the environment and environmental concerns are going to be the hot-button issue in the next presidential election. Even more, it will be the issue that wins the presidency. So that was my prediction. With conservative Christian politicians backing this typically left-leaning political issue, I see it as a common ground that the Democrats can really rally behind to grab the attention of a broad spectrum of voters. I was so convinced that I even bought a clean energy ETF (the only one that exists), PBW, and it is doing quite well now, I must say.

While environmental issues have stayed out of the headlines in recent months, I still think that now is its time to shine. Human disregard for the environment contributed to the severity of Katrina's storm, from the erosion of the barrier islands that would have absorbed some of the energy and power of those ridiculous winds to the global warming that made such a powerful storm in the first place. Deep within the current political atmosphere, I see the environment being a unifying theme. We can plan for the future by environmental planning for the Louisiana coastline to mitigate the risks of complete and utter destruction by storms and hurricanes and floods. We can invest in more clean energy to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and reduce our contribution to global warming. If I could make an investment in the environment as a political issue, I would do so in a heartbeat.

Getty Images

2005-09-07T08:46:00.000-07:00

I think Getty Images is awesome. They have such good quality pictures for almost any type of picture I'd want to include in a presentation or in graphic art. I used to think the little gettyimages watermark on all the pictures was annoying, until I found out that it goes away if you sign up for a free account. Anyways, I thought this picture was kind of funny.

Cultural Differences

2005-09-06T03:12:00.000-07:00

I really like this article by Nicolas Kristof of the NY Times. He comments on the horrors and degeneration of civilization in New Orleans after the hurricane.

One of the most dispiriting elements of the catastrophe in New Orleans was the looting. I covered the 1995 earthquake that leveled much of Kobe, Japan, killing 5,500, and for days I searched there for any sign of criminal behavior. Finally I found a resident who had seen three men steal food. I asked him whether he was embarrassed that Japanese would engage in such thuggery.

"No, you misunderstand," he said firmly. "These looters weren't Japanese. They were foreigners."

Personally, I've been finding it interesting to view the looting and anarchy in New Orleans in light of other responses to other disasters. While it may be unfair to compare the breakdown of civilization after Katrina and the cooperation and strength of NYC after 9/11, I did comment to Blaurb the other day how the response after the tsunami wasn't nearly as bad as it is reported to be in New Orleans. Kristof's comments further support the notion that Americans were behaving very very badly.

I've begun to ask myself the question: What makes New Orleans so crazy? I've come to three thoughts on this.

1) Competition. As society breaks down, competition naturally becomes more fierce. The fact that it happened in America may have exascerbated this effect, since our entire political and economic system is based on the competition and capitalism. Knowing that, it just plunged society into darkness, as each and every person saw the disaster not as a tragedy, but as opening up more opportunities. On a side note, my first thought that triggered this theory was that N.O. was in the "middle of the country" a.k.a. in a "red state," and that meant that they were republican and probably even more competitive than if this tragedy had happened in say California or Boston.

2) Polarization of Society. I think that as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, people in crises tend to help each other less. Perhaps this is because the rich and poor can't relate to each other and fully understand each others' plight? As a rich person, getting out of N.O. would be a relatively simple task; could he not understand how difficult it would be for a poor black family in the worst parts of town to get out? In a fishing village flattened by the tsunami, I'd know all my neighbors. Some may be richer and some may be poorer, but we all understand each other and have similar access to resources. In that environment, I hypothesize that there would be less looting and more compassion amongst survivors.

3) Technological Gaps. Perhaps our society has progressed and become so dependent on technology, that we don't know what existed before. It's like when you're in math class in elementary school, learning addition and subtraction, and you think, "We have calculators now. Why do I need to learn how to add?" Or the same question I asked myself in high school, "We have TI-89s now. Why do I need to learn Calculus?" When the electricity went out and the phoen system went down, society no longer knew how to operate. The infrastructure certainly wasn't there. No one was taught how to survive without electricity. No one was taught how to survive on their own. With telephone and the Internet, no one was forced to get to know their neighbors. The New Orleans community wasn't a community at all. The citizens didn't know each other, they simply inhabited the same city. Could this breakdown in the local community have fueled the rampant looting and crime in New Orleans?

Government

2005-09-02T00:35:00.000-07:00

After 5 years with this Bush administration, I've been starting to think about how I would characterize it in the history books. Early on, I would have been one to hold the view that, sure, Bush is dumb (or at least dumb-sounding) but he puts smart people around himself and he listens to them. When the Iraq war started, I still kind of held that view, likening the Iraq situation a little over-exuberance on the part of the Bush administration (revenge for Daddy). When it came out that there were no WMDs, I definitely thought there was some "irrational exuberance" (to take a phrase from the venerable Alan Greenspan) going on, along with some mistakes made by poor leadership.

The whole vacation thing has pissed me off, too. The president should not be allowed to vacation, and definitely not during a war or during a national crisis like Hurricane Katrina. The lack of compassion and concern in Bush's response has led me to believe that this administration is one the history books will call idealistic and naive. Highly principled, short-sighted (and dangerously so, as we have seen), and quick to retaliate against its enemies, Bush and his administration need to grow up.

What happens when someone speaks out against the administration or something Bush and his cronies are doing? They get punished, as we have seen with Cindy Sheehan, Valerie Plame and her husband, the Justice Department guy who attempted to call more attention to rises in racial profiling of Latinos and African-Americans, the list goes on, even as you go further back before Bush became President. How childish. Bush is like the class bully, where you know that if you tell on him, he'll come to getcha.

And Iraq? Bush is like a stubborn little boy, who won't admit he's wrong and "stays the course" at the peril of other American lives. Remember the debate between Kerry and Bush, where a woman asked Bush to talk about mistakes he's made in his first term? Remember how Bush couldn't give a straight answer? Now I realize, that maybe that's because he doesn't think he's made any mistakes.

How about the disasters that have occurred on Bush's watch? One word: Unprepared. It's true that planning and organization are higher-order functions of the brain, so naturally, this administration sucks at them. 9/11 might have been avoided or foiled before disaster struck, if, perhaps, Bush had paid more attention to the reports about the safety and security of America. Of course, safety and security are issues that we shouldn't expect from someone as immature as Bush; he's only a child. For those of you who've seen Fahrenheit 911, do you remember Bush's dumbstruck expression upon hearing the news about the World Trade Center? I'll give him credit for the months after 9/11, as he provided leadership to coordinate the outpouring of aid and the reconstruction of New York. It still didn't stop him from using the opportunity to manipulate the world towards his own agenda, however. And Hurricane Katrina? I find it easier to imagine the Bush administration as a 4-year old child who has just heard the news about the disaster. He hears the news but can't comprehend what it means, and how to help.

Too bad there isn't a Supernanny for Presidents. Maybe we should be thinking more about child psychology when dealing with this administration.

Quick Thought About Blogs

2005-08-31T02:27:00.000-07:00

Quick Thought: Blogs are like a digital identity. Well, it's more than that. It's more like a digital existence. Or maybe it's like a house. A blog holds my thoughts, my wants, desires, likes, dislikes, etc. If we think about blogs as individuals in the digital world, what would we predict for the future of blogging?

It seems that many people are surprised at the surge in the popularity of blogging. Even more remarkable is the fact that blogging has existed for years before the current swell of attention sprang up (in fact, I like to brag that I am an original blogger from way back, as I held my own text-only version of my blog on my own website for a while, before xanga/blogger came out with their pretty, cutesy versions).

Consider this:
Think about the blogosphere as a new land mass that has just been discovered, let's call it Blogos, kind of like how North America was discovered in the 1700s. In the early days, individuals would make the journey into cyberspace and set up shop with a blog, like early settlers and pilgrims that crossed the Atlantic Ocean. These settlers might even colonize, and bring a few friends along with them, or make friends with other bloggers they've found since arriving on Blogos. A small community forms (Think about any blog and how most have links on the right- or left-hand sidebar to friend's blogs).

Early on, Blogos was full of these small colonies, as groups of friends would keep track of each other's lives via their blogs, before empires like Blogger and Xanga came to Blogos, bringing wealth and gifts into the New World. They staked their piece of land on Blogos in search of starting a large Blogos city, with their pretty web landscaping/formatting and convenient publishing tool. They succeed in attracting newcomers to Blogos and assimilating a few O.G. bloggers along the way. In addition to forming communities with direct links to other bloggers, there arise public groups for affiliating any digital existence to a public label (NoR cAl AZNS!!!!!!!!!!!!!, or California Republicans). Now blogs have even evolved to cover more than just people and their lives, they've become commercial. There are sex blogs and political blogs and techno-blogs, sports blogs, company blogs, you name it. And I think they are all analogous to commercial offices/buildings in the city of Blogos. Recently, and not surprising considering Blogos is such a rapidly growing city/state, we have seen superstars and celebrities spring up in Blogos (think Drudge Report, Boing Boing, Fleshbot, Engadget, and more). What's next?

1) I predict our blogs will one day become intelligent enough to find other people who we should really get in touch with. My blog would go mingle in the digital world and find other blogs that comment on similar topics, or find blogs that would otherwise interest me, and I'll be presented with new people to meet every time I log on. The fact that the world will be blogging in the future and millions and maybe billions of people will be shouting out to the blogosphere will also necessitate this feature, because you can't read EVERYONE's blog.

2) Carrying the city analogy a bit further, I would have expected to see more group blogs, or blogs that describe a clique of friends, for example. It may well show up in the future, when a close-knit group of friends is tired of clicking through any number of different blogs just to catch up on their whole clique of friends. Maybe this will happen, only time will tell.

3) It would be interesting to see if any sort of political system arises from Blogos, in that users will get to democratically vote for changes they'd want Blogger.com to implement, for example. Would Bloggers be able to vote for the next CEO of Blogger.com?

4) Wouldn't it be interesting to have real estate in Blogos? I guess it would be like Geocities of old, but create a landscape with regions separated by both culture and topic or something, and allow blogs to take up shop on a specific lot. There could be a residential area for personal blogs, separate from commercial areas. There could be a mall, political headquarters, you name it. Old blogs that aren't updated can be "evicted" for not "paying rent" (updating), and they can be taken up by other bloggers who want to move to a higher-profile area. Bloggers would have neighbors, communities can form in a (virtual) physical space. You and your friends can live on the same block. Wow I like this idea. Perhaps I shall try to become the Donald Trump of the blogosphere. I can totally picture "taking a walk" around my neighborhood to read my friend's blogs. I can picture "driving to the mall" to go shopping for gadgets. I can picture a posh area of Blogos, where all the nicely-formatted blogs all live, and I can picture a minimalist area, for blogs who think that content is most important ("home is where the heart is").

Technology = Fatter, Dumber People?

2005-08-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

I promise that I won't always write about education-related topics, but I just read another NYTimes.com article about how SAT Math scores have risen but SAT Verbal scores have remained flat, and have declined over the last 38 years from a high of 543 points in 1967 to 508 in 2005.

It reminded me of a thought I've held onto for a while now, and while it's no monstrous insight or revelation, it's an interesting conversation piece, if anything. I sometimes think that as technology has progressed, it has improved our math skills while impairing verbal skills.

Word-processing, for example, has made me a horrible essay-writer. Where children in the 50s and 60s and 70s had to start composing an essay from the beginning, I, with the powers bestowed on me by Microsoft Word, compose from the middle. It's just easier that way, for me at least.

Read books? Why not watch the movie?

Instant Messaging/Text-Messaging also wreaks it's own havoc. It's created it's own grammar and easily influenced youngsters (like my sister) begin to speak as if they are IMing someone. It's true, I've witnessed my sister speak to me in abbreviated, short sentences that would make no sense unless I translated what she said into IM talk. Of course, my sister must also be taking for granted that there is no running transcript of our dialog above my head.

E-mail has killed the handwritten letter.

There are plenty more examples, but I'd prefer to engage in an intellectual conversation than to simply preach from this soapbox of mine.

Why does education in America suck?

2005-08-29T05:55:00.000-07:00

Ever since my childhood (I'll admit it wasn't that long ago), I've occassionally seen statistics about how the children of this country are falling behind other countries in terms of academic metrics like math literacy, reading literacy, and have always wondered how this figure could be real in a country as prosperous as the United States. As I was reading Bob Herbert, I had this thought: what is it about being a prosperous nation makes me think our education should be any better?

We're prosperous now, but that just means the adults that run this world today were well-educated when they were growing up. I have no statistics from the 50s, 60s, and 70s (and I doubt that objective ones are available for comparison between the USSR and the US), but I'd venture to say that the Cold-War bred a pervasive national pressure to be better educated. In this day and age, the pressure to succeed just isn't strong enough to motivate children to gain the skills we (as adults) see as necessary to be a successful contributor to society. Could it be that our country has gone complacent? And if so, will programs like No Child Left Behind effectively address this attitude of children?

Personally, I think that No Child Left Behind is at least a bit mis-guided. While it may have been true in the past that US kids were falling behind because standard education was not available to all, I think the tide may have turned (I try not to use the phrase "tipping point" because man, everyone and their mom uses that term). Nowadays the education deficit shows up more in the attitudes of the children that we are trying to teach. They understand that the government says they need to learn how to read, but they don't know why it's so important.

How can we express to children these days the importance of education without fabricating a comeptitor or "enemy"?

I think the core concept here is competition. Has the competition that makes capitalism so great been missing from education? I can't decide. The topic has been broached before when the Soviets fell and the US was the only remaining superpower, but I wonder if the education system is showing us the effects of the lone-superpower-syndrome.

If we need more competition, I suggest we further segment the school system, and I suggest it be done in middle and high schools. I have personally learned most in the transitions to a new school, into middle school, into high school, and into college.

Might it be beneficial to throw our kids into new systems with clean slates in which they can experiment and re-invent themselves? Kids these days are all about reinvention, why not give them a convenient vehicle to do it with? 10th graders should graduate from Frosh-Soph high school and move to a different, more mature high school for 11th and 12th graders.

How about making each school stage competitive? Of course this might suggest the "bad kids" go to one school and the "good kids" go to another, very likely causing the "bad kids" to feel alienated. So instead of measuring academic performance, I suggest each school should develop its own culture, and to have a different environment. Like a simplified college system, or like Gryffindor and Slytherin, for example. No school would be "better" than another, they would just be different.

OK, Time To Get Blogged-Down

2005-08-29T05:39:00.000-07:00

So, after reading a NY Times article about Re-engineering the Internet, I've decided that I should dedicate my blog to things I question about the world, and post them in search of other people who would like to discuss such things with me. Regarding a re-engineering of the internet, I recall holding a specific conversation with Bryan Kennedy in May (or was it April) asking him, "How would you build the Internet if you had to do it all over again, starting now?" While I may not have been asking about security and pervasive networks like the article posted above, we definitely talked about how security is one of the primary issues facing the Internet today. We didn't come to any conclusions, but the point is that we were concerned about it, and posed the thought question. I'm also very sure those at the NSF (who the article is referring to have been thinking about this for a while now too). But give us some credit, we aren't (yet) top scientists whoa re on top of the academic world of the Internet.

I also find some inspiration from Ender's Game, a (remarkably) old sci-fi novel (published I think in 1985 or so) about these super-intelligent kids who are tested by the government to find geniuses who are to be trained to be military generals by the time they are teenagers. In the story, Ender is the super-genius of military strategy, and he has two siblings who decide to make blogs (YES, there were BLOGS in this story from 1985) that comment on society, and gain a rather large following. Specifically, I recall a conversation between Valentine and Peter, where the question is posed, "Don't you ever say something at the dinner table, only to hear other, adult-people talking about it a few weeks later?" I'm paraphrasing, but today's Re-Engineering the Internet story felt just like that. More musings coming up, I hope.

Plangry

2005-08-17T00:11:00.000-07:00

I made up a new word today, and it is "plangry." It is a word that combines "play" and "angry" to describe when Blaurb is only playfully angry with me. I find it quite useful.

Amidst the many promises of keeping up with my blog, I have not followed through. I have ignored it, I think because I get my daily dose of rambling on about myself through talking on the phone with Blaurb. Maybe I'll update, but I still don't yet have a theme or tpic for this blog. Is it going to be my boring daily life? Is it going to be my insignificant musings about the world? I'd love to be a cool blog, like PostSecret or something, but I wouldn't want it to be kitschy...maybe I'll think of something, maybe this blog will go the way of the horse and carriage...

Video Conferencing

2005-06-04T22:43:00.000-07:00

Why hasn't video comferencing caught on? Internet telephony is on its way, (thanks to Skype) but what about video messaging? Maybe we're just not ready for it, but a thought came to me today, and it was about the whole video-conferencing interface.

The interface is too much like a telephone, and not enough like actual face-to-face conversation. I'm also still distracted by other things on my computer screen, and in that way I am treating it like a phone call. I mean, I would never try multi-tasking during an actual conversation, right? Maybe it's because most video conference calls have this strange phenomenon where the person you're talking to isn't looking at his/her camera. Maybe if there were a way to make the call more personable, it would catch on more.

I was brainstorming with Bryan today, and I thought that a good way would be to have four cameras at different places around the computer monitor, and then to triangulate a straight-on view to portray to the user on the other end of the call. The user would then be able to look at the screen, and see a caller looking straight back at him.

Of course the technology is probably not there yet, especially in home machines, but maybe one day...

Memorial Day Weekend!

2005-05-30T19:50:00.000-07:00

I feel bad for not posting more regularly, since I had made a resolution to post to this thing more often. Soooo.....

Thefacebook: Wow. Everyone is transferring and there are SO many emails. I may have to ask for some help or do some other programming to write a script to take care of things. Wow. It's not a bad job though, and some emails are interesting.

MobMov: So Bryan ran two more MobMovs, which I think should now be renamed MobiMovie (thanks Jen) because it rolls off the tongue more easily. Bryan's thinking about it, I hope. We watched The Graduate on Thursday(?) and then American Graffiti on Sunday, with American Graffiti being MobMov's first public debut! American Graffiti was a little hard to follow, I think the drive-in format distracts a bit, which I guess explains why most people don't really go to drive-ins to watch the movie. =) Don't worry though, me and Sanjay behaved during our movie.

Gypsy's: I had an interesting conversation with Heena a couple nights ago, we were talking at Gypsy's Trattoria (which I will sorely miss when I leave Berkeley) about Berkeley Innovation's recycling project and got onto the topic of recycling and the environment. And I again made my proclamation that the environment will be THE political issue of the 2008 presidential election. We talked about the president and then got onto the topic of Supreme Court justices, which I think is the scariest thing for America this presidential term. It would take too long to go into this in detail, but I'm scared that one of the "liberal" justices will die or retire and then Bush will appoint a conservative justice to the bench, possibly altering the status quo on landmark decisions like Roe v. Wade, which was one of the 5-4 decisions (in favor of preserving the right of a woman to have an abortion).

Memorial Day: Heena organized a potluck today and Sanjay and I brought our grillin' power to Memorial Glade today and we had a little tbp get together. I hope I didn't get sunburned.

In other news, I will be moving down to San Diego these next few days, packing a UHaul trialer behind my SUV and putting it all into a Public Storage facility. And I'll get to see Jen! =D

2005-05-18T11:10:00.000-07:00

Speaking of identity theft...

Senator Ted Stevens wanted to know just how much the Internet had turned private lives into open books. So the senator, a Republican from Alaska and the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, instructed his staff to steal his identity.
"I regret to say they were successful," the senator reported at a hearing he held last week on data theft.

- Courtesy of The New York Times

So I thought I lost my identity...

2005-05-18T09:20:00.000-07:00

When going down to sign papers with thefacebook, I had to bring along my driver's license as well as my social security card for them to make copies. I happily obliged, and after signing, went on with my day, visiting Hanna at Stanford (which is like literally across the street from thefacebook's offices) and shopping at Target before going to dinner with a family friend, before going home. When I got home I realized that I didn't have my social security card and my driver's license, and felt completely stupid. I had some spare time before the dinner, so I decided to clean up my car to free it from the various papers I had amassed, and I could only assume I had thrown my cards away along with the trash, since I recall getting my cards back and putting them in my pocket. I spent hte next day scheduling an appointment at the DMV and filling out the paperwork to get my social security card back, and worrying about identity theft if some bum in Palo Alto (yeah that city is totally over-run with bums, unlike Berkeley) picks up my stuff. A day later, after I apply for a new social security card (which is free, btw), I get an email from thefacebook that we had left my cards in the copier. This once again proves to me that none of us is dumber than all of us (echoing that awesome Teamwork poster from Despair, Inc.). Crisis averted.

Part-time at thefacebook!

2005-05-15T00:00:00.000-07:00

I got the job at thefacebook! I just got the email from thefacebook, offering me a spot on their team. I'm really excited because it's a good job to have, and it's good experience, i think, to have some experience working at a startup company. Props to Debbie for hooking it up! I can't wait to start working...I'm supposed to go to Palo Alto next week to sign stuff and get oriented. YAY job! This will definitely help me get through my tough PhD years (which only pays me a modest $21,000 stipend).

Senioritis!

2005-05-12T20:26:00.000-07:00

I feel really lethargic today. I guess it's senioritis, but still, it makes me feel gross to sit here and not do productive things. Am I gross? I'm gross, huh? Typically, to get out of this rut, I'll just dive into something and start working, and I think i've decided that that something is going to be this blog, which I still haven't made decisions about yet. I may in fact scrap blogger, and use the nifty blog package that Bryan uses, because it has some nifty features not available here.

I'll stick with this one for a bit though and see how it works out. The following were possible angles my blog could take.

- Moblog - Use Flicker to upload pics from my cell phone for everyday shots and integrate that into daily stories about random stuff. Can't promise the most exciting of days though.
- News commentaries - I know there are a bunch out there already, but I am a pretty avid reader of the NYTimes and I usually find some good stories that are worthwhile reads.
- Thought column - I have my idea repository posted elsewhere on blogger, but myabe it should just be integrated into my main blog.
- I kind of want to also have a general "news about me" section, so that people who don't check the blog that often can just catch up on the basics of what's going on in my life. "Life news" or something like that.
- I'd also like a future adventure section or something that tells people about an upcoming adventure, i dunno.
- Do you think I could make money on the internet selling naked pictures of myself?

OK bye.

Paul Graham talk

2005-05-11T21:12:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to a transcript of an interesting talk I attended last week. Paul Graham spoke to an audience of undergraduate computer science majors about how the trend in hiring is moving away from traditional recruiting, and more towards purchasing startup companies or entire teams of people. He argues that it's win-win for both parties because the employees get paid more, and the company gets a close-knit team that is already excited about working on the project. It's an intriguing idea, and definitely one that has altered how I think about starting up a company.

http://www.paulgraham.com/hiring.html

Feeling blah...

2005-05-11T21:05:00.000-07:00

I dunno...lately I have felt a sort of lackadaisical attitude towards everything. I guess it could be senioritis...but whatever. I guess I'll just relax and kick back until things pick up this summer. I'm really excited by the way. I've started to pick up Jono's books, and the techniques look really intriguing. For some reason when I think of Jono, I start thinking with a British accent. Yes, I also find it quite odd.

Jen also suggested I work with Geert Schmidt-Schoenbein when I go to San Diego, who does research I'm genuinely interested in on inflammation...more on that later!

Rollercoaster

2005-04-29T21:19:00.000-07:00

It's been a roller coaster week! My mood has been up and down this past week, mostly due to the successes and failures of the Shuttle-Tracking Project, which, I'm happy to say, is finally working! We got some good data on the bus location, and it's published to the web in real-time.

Other than that, I've been settling down on my decision for my future, and it looks like I will be going to UCSD for graduate school this fall pursuing my PhD! The prospect of spending 5 years doing cutting-edge research is both daunting and exciting at the same time. Right now I'm just trying to digest it, thinking of random contingency plans if things go horrifically wrong.

Summer is also shaping up to be exciting! From June 10th - 19th, I'll be in New Zealand with Jen, and then it's off to Stanford for a month at the Graduate School of Business Summer Institute, and then two months in Belgium at CREAX. I was under the assumption that CREAX was going to pay for my plane ticket out to Belgium, but currently we're still talking about how that will work out. Hopefully I can manage to get over there in one piece.

That's all for now! I'm sure I'll have some more ruminations as time goes on...

My New Blog!

2005-04-24T23:41:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog! I haven't decided what I'll use it for, but it's going to be cool!