Does it count as insomnia if there are just too many interesting things I could be doing rather than sleeping right now? Am I putting sleep off just because it's good for me??
I've got to start this thing up again. I need an outlet for these thoughts that keep assaulting me late at night.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Thursday, March 22, 2007
In other news...
I've decided to accept the Charles River Analytics offer. (Not that I was really entertaining that many offers, really.) CRA is an applied AI company that does contract work, mostly for the US government. Anyway, the pay is decent, I have 13 weeks of work, and it looks like things should be pretty interesting there. It's still got a startup kind of feel (being about 20 years old but still small), and it looks like at least a few pretty brilliant people work there - they take pride in being well-stocked in PhD's. I'll be working in the Cognitive Systems group - I'll post more about that as I learn more details.
Link Dump
In no particular order, and with no attempt at coherence:
Cognition Technologies: mmmm meaning-based search. Definitely need to look into this for next summer.
Harry Maugans tells us how to make Ajax easy.
Now that I'm thinking about the summer and making my body usable again, here are 10 ideas to get You exercising.
Want some nice wallpapers? If you can get past the annoying Flash (warning: "soothing" music), there are some neat ones here.
And finally... Eric Prydz's Call on Me, now for females!
Cognition Technologies: mmmm meaning-based search. Definitely need to look into this for next summer.
Harry Maugans tells us how to make Ajax easy.
Now that I'm thinking about the summer and making my body usable again, here are 10 ideas to get You exercising.
Want some nice wallpapers? If you can get past the annoying Flash (warning: "soothing" music), there are some neat ones here.
And finally... Eric Prydz's Call on Me, now for females!
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Another Interesting Woman, Milk, and TellMe
So thanks to an anonymous reader(!), I've discovered another interesting woman, Eva Hoffman. I'm linking to a site with an interview because information about her seems to be a little sparse (Google turns up a lot of older links). The site tells me that she's a visiting prof here at MIT, but I haven't heard of her (then again, I suppose the name wouldn't have jumped out at me even if there had been a guest lecture by her). An MIT Google search turns up mostly things from a few years ago... maybe she's retired now? In any case, Lost in Translation (apparently not an unpopular title) is on my reading list now, too.
In other interesting things, there was a recent finding (thanks, National Geographic!) saying that humans were mostly lactose intolerant up to the beginning of domestication and farming. There is now speculation and debate about whether humans started doing so because they could stomach cow's milk or the other way around, but the most interesting thing to me was the fact that the majority of people in the world are lactose intolerant. Sparing the biological details, that means that they lose the ability to digest milk after about age 4. It turns out that 'white' people, specifically northern Europeans, are an exception to this trend. Now, growing up in a northern European country, I was completely bewildered by my lactose intolerant friends when I moved to the US. I thought it was just another one of those weird 'American' trends. Now it turns out it was just due to greater ethnic diversity.
On the techie side, it looks like Microsoft might buy TellMe (serves them right for rejecting me for an internship last semester). Yes, yes, they're just rumors, but the two are discussing it. I don't know whether that would be good or bad for getting an internship there next year. Also, Google Maps now has TRAFFIC!
Finally, here are some fun music videos (thanks, VSL!):
* Real-life Pacman (the song's not bad either)
* "Window in the Skies", by U2 (careful, it's catchy)
* "Enjoy the Silence", by Depeche Mode, because the 80's are awesome
In other interesting things, there was a recent finding (thanks, National Geographic!) saying that humans were mostly lactose intolerant up to the beginning of domestication and farming. There is now speculation and debate about whether humans started doing so because they could stomach cow's milk or the other way around, but the most interesting thing to me was the fact that the majority of people in the world are lactose intolerant. Sparing the biological details, that means that they lose the ability to digest milk after about age 4. It turns out that 'white' people, specifically northern Europeans, are an exception to this trend. Now, growing up in a northern European country, I was completely bewildered by my lactose intolerant friends when I moved to the US. I thought it was just another one of those weird 'American' trends. Now it turns out it was just due to greater ethnic diversity.
On the techie side, it looks like Microsoft might buy TellMe (serves them right for rejecting me for an internship last semester). Yes, yes, they're just rumors, but the two are discussing it. I don't know whether that would be good or bad for getting an internship there next year. Also, Google Maps now has TRAFFIC!
Finally, here are some fun music videos (thanks, VSL!):
* Real-life Pacman (the song's not bad either)
* "Window in the Skies", by U2 (careful, it's catchy)
* "Enjoy the Silence", by Depeche Mode, because the 80's are awesome
Friday, February 23, 2007
"Drop a class"
So now we're into the fourth week of classes (it was the third when I started writing this post), and I've accumulated so much that I'll split this post into two: personal and... well, the interesting stuff. So after the frantic SATPrep reg preparations of the first week and the work-and-Valentine's-filled second week, then more frantic oh-no-the-program-is-about-to-launch SATPrep work, I decided to drop a class: 6.004, the required lab in Computational Structures. I'd registered for and started taking 6.002 (required lab in circuits) and 6.004 simultaneously, only briefly considering actually going through with both. No, I realized that in order to actually do my UROP this time, and to learn the cool stuff that I'm going to get from 6.863, the kind of stuff that's actually going to make me a viable candidate for NLP work, I'm going to need to........... drop a class. (Around the hall, this phrase has actually become a normal response to anyone who has too much work, and a normal response to me when I say anything at all.)
Regarding my UROP (undergraduate research), and somewhat-related-6.863: it has to be the coolest stuff I've done. I do other classwork only because it is mechanical and pressing. I do 6.863 because I really like it, and I find everything I read so exciting that it takes me twice as long to do any of the assignments for this class because I spend too much time thinking about its applications. What can I say - I have a weak spot for regular expressions now (I even tried them out on 'tyche'; grep and find are my two new friends).
On a non-school note, Nick and I will go to the Bahamas over Spring Break; it looks like the trip won't be prohibitively expensive after all (at least not immediately), which is nice, but it did take us about 7 hours to book the flights and lodging. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that trying to redeem free tickets is next to impossible, especially over Spring break, and especially when trying to do it with two people.
I really will update more often; it's just hard to get into it, and the more interesting stuff piles up here, the less I want to do it - but I think that's just human nature.
Regarding my UROP (undergraduate research), and somewhat-related-6.863: it has to be the coolest stuff I've done. I do other classwork only because it is mechanical and pressing. I do 6.863 because I really like it, and I find everything I read so exciting that it takes me twice as long to do any of the assignments for this class because I spend too much time thinking about its applications. What can I say - I have a weak spot for regular expressions now (I even tried them out on 'tyche'; grep and find are my two new friends).
On a non-school note, Nick and I will go to the Bahamas over Spring Break; it looks like the trip won't be prohibitively expensive after all (at least not immediately), which is nice, but it did take us about 7 hours to book the flights and lodging. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that trying to redeem free tickets is next to impossible, especially over Spring break, and especially when trying to do it with two people.
I really will update more often; it's just hard to get into it, and the more interesting stuff piles up here, the less I want to do it - but I think that's just human nature.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Happiness, + segue
Last Friday's VSL email was another gem. It turns out that Sundance has a virtual movie festival this year. And best of all, it's free. I've seen about 5 so far, and they were more weird than interesting or good. And I actively tried to pick the normal ones! VSL knows their stuff though: the recommended short was an 11-minute film called Happiness. After watching it, I found out that the "star" is Polish actress Elżbieta Czyżewska, ex-patriate. It doesn't mean anything for the movie, but what can I say - I like seeing Polish people around. Also, watch it. It's beautifully done, and all women should be able to identify with its message.
[Spoiler!] So the short is about this old woman (probably a spinster, lives alone) named Iwona, who works in a condom factory and visibly leads a pretty dreary existence. In the condom factory, she sees her supervisor, who superficially seems to be very confident, because she wears white stilettos at work. She also wears band-aids on her heels, the typical symbol of the pain required for beauty or style. One day, Iwona buys an expensive box labeled "happiness" from a Russian store. Eventually, she returns it... I suppose she knows how she will get happiness herself. She buys white stilettos, wears them to work, and goes through all the pain of wearing ridiculous shoes. She puts band-aids on her heels. In the last shot, we see her feet, and her supervisor's feet - this time wearing red stilettos.[done]
This is where the segue comes in.
I was reading about why women desperately want to be skinnier than what men find attractive. A few observations:
* women are more comfortable being naked in front of men than women, because women are critical.
* on an evolutionary layer, attractive=fertile looking, BUT
* on an environmental layer, what is hard to attain = attractive, because people admire this. So if food is scarce, well-fed women are beautiful, while in plentiful America, thin is the thing to be, AND
* on a cultural layer, thinness is prized because it is a sign of independence, strength and achievement.
I completely agree with the last point (the second point is not one I've thought about before). Every time I look at a thin girl, I always see her achievements first: she's so driven because she's skinny; she's so hardworking because she's skinny; she's so disciplined that she can keep her body skinny. She's in control. It always comes back to issues of control - I wish I didn't understand the anorexics quite so well, especially when I'm cursed with this complete lack of self-control that, luckily, sets me apart from them.
[Spoiler!] So the short is about this old woman (probably a spinster, lives alone) named Iwona, who works in a condom factory and visibly leads a pretty dreary existence. In the condom factory, she sees her supervisor, who superficially seems to be very confident, because she wears white stilettos at work. She also wears band-aids on her heels, the typical symbol of the pain required for beauty or style. One day, Iwona buys an expensive box labeled "happiness" from a Russian store. Eventually, she returns it... I suppose she knows how she will get happiness herself. She buys white stilettos, wears them to work, and goes through all the pain of wearing ridiculous shoes. She puts band-aids on her heels. In the last shot, we see her feet, and her supervisor's feet - this time wearing red stilettos.[done]
This is where the segue comes in.
I was reading about why women desperately want to be skinnier than what men find attractive. A few observations:
* women are more comfortable being naked in front of men than women, because women are critical.
* on an evolutionary layer, attractive=fertile looking, BUT
* on an environmental layer, what is hard to attain = attractive, because people admire this. So if food is scarce, well-fed women are beautiful, while in plentiful America, thin is the thing to be, AND
* on a cultural layer, thinness is prized because it is a sign of independence, strength and achievement.
I completely agree with the last point (the second point is not one I've thought about before). Every time I look at a thin girl, I always see her achievements first: she's so driven because she's skinny; she's so hardworking because she's skinny; she's so disciplined that she can keep her body skinny. She's in control. It always comes back to issues of control - I wish I didn't understand the anorexics quite so well, especially when I'm cursed with this complete lack of self-control that, luckily, sets me apart from them.
Friday, January 19, 2007
"Infidel" and Other Matters
Today's VSL email is the first that really struck me.
The advertised book is part Salman Rushdie, part Gloria Steinem, part Iman; it's called "Infidel," and it's written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born woman who served in the Dutch parliament and, I assume, knows a good bit about the life of a Muslim woman. In 2004, she and filmmaker Theo Van Gogh made a powerful and *very* controversial 10-minute movie portraying the abuses of women in Islam, depicted as a woman's prayer to Allah. (See it here, via Google Video.) Van Gogh was assassinated by a Muslim; Hirsi Ali is now hiding, a la Salman Rushdie. So, watching the movie, I realized that one Cause that I can really see myself getting involved in is this oppression of women; I'm not sure what I would do, but I firmly believe in giving women all of the same rights and freedoms as men (though I recognize that there are inherent differences between the genders). For some reason, out of all the issues plaguing the world (and there are many), this is the one that strikes me the most, and moves me most to action. Anyway, Hirsi Ali's book comes out in February, and I'm planning to buy it.
Best price: http://www.overstock.com/cgi-bin/d2.cgi?PAGE=PRODUCT&PROD_ID=2141325&cid=80486&fp=F
Also good: http://www.strandbooks.com/profile/?isbn=0743289684
(Even Amazon has a pretty decent deal on it.)
I'll buy it once I convince myself that I have time to read it.
In other news, IAP stuff is going strong; I'll try to keep this blog updated on 6.370, the Berwick UROP, maybe some SATPrep, and other generally good stuff. Now it's either back to coding or off to sleep.
The advertised book is part Salman Rushdie, part Gloria Steinem, part Iman; it's called "Infidel," and it's written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born woman who served in the Dutch parliament and, I assume, knows a good bit about the life of a Muslim woman. In 2004, she and filmmaker Theo Van Gogh made a powerful and *very* controversial 10-minute movie portraying the abuses of women in Islam, depicted as a woman's prayer to Allah. (See it here, via Google Video.) Van Gogh was assassinated by a Muslim; Hirsi Ali is now hiding, a la Salman Rushdie. So, watching the movie, I realized that one Cause that I can really see myself getting involved in is this oppression of women; I'm not sure what I would do, but I firmly believe in giving women all of the same rights and freedoms as men (though I recognize that there are inherent differences between the genders). For some reason, out of all the issues plaguing the world (and there are many), this is the one that strikes me the most, and moves me most to action. Anyway, Hirsi Ali's book comes out in February, and I'm planning to buy it.
Best price: http://www.overstock.com/cgi-bin/d2.cgi?PAGE=PRODUCT&PROD_ID=2141325&cid=80486&fp=F
Also good: http://www.strandbooks.com/profile/?isbn=0743289684
(Even Amazon has a pretty decent deal on it.)
I'll buy it once I convince myself that I have time to read it.
In other news, IAP stuff is going strong; I'll try to keep this blog updated on 6.370, the Berwick UROP, maybe some SATPrep, and other generally good stuff. Now it's either back to coding or off to sleep.
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