Entries Tagged 'News' ↓

Today I read a rather refreshing article called “Casting off life’s cares” on the LA Times. Basically it tells the story of an ordained pastor named Dave Dixon who gave away pretty much all of his possessions and started to live on a boat and sing songs in a restaurant a few hours a week. His expenses are $565 per month, and he says that “time, not money, is the real commodity in life”. He says that his lifestyle is divinely inspired and “sees himself living out God’s message that faith and people, not possessions, are what is of true value.”

Interestingly enough, I wrote about Chinese proverbs today on Wise Bread and this article reflects the first proverb I wrote about, “an inch of time is worth an inch of gold; but it is hard to buy one inch of time with one inch of gold”. Time is definitely more precious than money, and Dave Dixon has that figured out.  Additionally, I think it’s great to see that someone realizes that you really don’t need much to survive in this world.  My friend the Retirement Hobo said that in South East Asia he was able to eat well on $1 a day, and $10000 is a good retirement fund there.  He might be exaggerating a bit, but I really think that if we are able to let go of a lot of luxury that we have we can live well on very little money.

I think it is awesome that this pastor Dixon seems to trust God so much with his lifestyle.  Though, it’s funny that the author of the article describes Dave as “quixotic” multiple times in the article. Obviously, some people might think that Dave is a fool for trusting God with his health and not having health insurance, but  apparently God provided for him when he had a kidney stone.  He may seem like a stupid bum living on a rickety boat, but I know so many people with huge houses that they slave over and complain about.  Can these people with so many more possessions than Dave Dixon say that they are really truly free and happy?  Dave said in the article, “my possessions made me work harder and stole my time”, and I agree with that sentiment.  We all have an extremely ephemeral existence on this earth, and for us to devote so much time and effort to acquire things we can’t bring with us to the next life is quite pointless.

Now, would I sell everything  and go live on a boat?  Probably not because I don’t like boats very much, but I wouldn’t mind living in a faraway city in Asia where rent is less than $100 a month.  I could even have a little piece of land where I can plant some tomatoes, peas, and corn, and raise a few chickens and ducks.  These are all things I had when I was a kid in China, and really that’s all I need to be happy.  It is a dream lifestyle that is so far removed  from my current daily grind in a glass tower, and maybe one day I can convince the hubby to go there.

Share This

Recently I have seen a few blog posts about this article stating that women have a pretty tough time working in science and technology due to a “pervasive macho environment”. Ironically, this article was published in the “Fashion and Style” section of the New York Times, and that raised the ire of some more women. The article stated that 53% of the women surveyed said they have to “act like a man” in order to succeed and that 63% of women experience harassment on the job. Sadly, as a woman working in technology, I have to say that this really isn’t news. Here are some of my thoughts and experiences surrounding this issue.

I have to say that I am pretty used to “acting like a man”. When I entered the EECS program at UC Berkeley, my class was only 18% female and I remember that in one particular class there were only two girls. Consequently, all my friends and project partners ended up being guys. I think one thing that makes being a man easy for me is my name. You can’t really tell whether I am male or female from the name Xin (in Chinese it’s a name appropriate for a man or woman). It is funny to me when people assume that I am male from my resume, though. One time a recruiter called me and I answered, “yes, this is Xin”, and he actually said, “Oh, I’m pleasantly surprised that you are a woman”. I think my name makes people who read my resume and emails comfortable because they generally assume that I am another faceless immigrant man working in technology.

Another thing that helps me is that I am pretty immersed in the geek culture so I have common interests with the guys and I know how to communicate with them. For example, at my first company I met guys that watched the same SciFi shows as I did and played the same games. Then I made friends at work at the second company I worked for because I posted a list of games I liked. Suddenly some engineers that never spoke to me before started to talk to me. It has been my experience that most women are not as nerdy and dorky, though, so they tend to be outsiders in a majority of game loving and young hackers and alienation is never a nice feeling. For most of my school and career, men have treated me like one of the guys, and I am pretty sure that has spared me a lot of harassment. So once again, I think I am validating the original article’s point that you need to be like a man to be accepted in a man’s world.

Finally, another point in the article that I have thought about a lot is the attrition rate of women from science and engineering jobs. I wrote in a previous article that female engineers with children are somewhat disadvantaged because they are supposed to work the weird hours like everyone else, but their kids don’t allow them to, and as a result resentment brews. Just as the article pointed out, a lot of women drop out of science and technology between the ages of 35 to 40 because these women don’t have the luxury of a wife that takes care of the kids. This is actually one of the reasons why I want to make enough dough in seven years and quit working full time in the tech industry.

Right now I am actually in a pretty good company where approximately half of my team members are female engineers. The company seems to be really supportive of its employees in taking care of their personal issues.  When a teammate went through a personal tragedy everyone allowed her to have as much time as she needed to recover.  I find this quite rare and somewhat endearing. It gives me hope that perhaps I would stay a long time here and more companies will work on retaining their female talent with flexible schedules and moral support.

Share This

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon a site named Angry Renter through a Google ad. I rarely click on Adsense ads, but this one intrigued me. The site presents a petition for renters to sign in hopes of stopping a housing bailout. I perused the site a little bit and figured that online petitions never really work, but I left a comment anyway and moved on.

Interestingly enough, this weekend I read an “expose” by the Wall Street Journal about Angry Renter. The gist of the article is that Angry Renter is a fake grass roots campaign run by a non-profit organization called FreedomWorks.org ran by a bunch of fat cats including Steve Forbes. They also listed the expensive properties the leaders of the organization owns. They also quoted the president of FreedomWorks.org saying “I’m an angry homeowner who pays his mortgage”.

I found it funny that the Wall Street Journal needed to write this article because it shows that maybe Angry Renter is really pissing someone off. So what if Angry Renter is run by homeowners? Homeowners pay income taxes also, and I don’t think any sensible person wants their money to be used to prop up bubblicious housing prices so that their children cannot afford a reasonable home. I also don’t think anyone wants to contribute their hard earned money to banks that scoop in billions of dollars a year by being legal loan sharks. Though the site is biased, some of the statements on Angry Renter are true. For example, renters do not get tax rebates for renting, and for all intents and purposes, renting serves the same basic need as buying a home. Why is there such a clear discrimination? Renters do wield less political power because they own less money as a whole compared to the banks and homeowners. So what is the problem with one little non-profit group with rich donors wanting to give renters a voice?  Additionally, it is also true that most homeowners are responsible and didn’t buy into the housing bubble so that they don’t need a bailout.  So why should all of us suffer for the folly of a few?

I am just surprised that all of this is happening in America, a place that prides itself on freedom, democracy, and free market.  Why should people have the freedom to be stupid and irresponsible, but not be encouraged to manage their money wisely?  A general housing bailout seems to send the message that saving money for a downpayment and renting is stupid because as long as you bought a house the government will protect you.  Why don’t they apply bailouts to obsessive gamblers that were “tricked” by the casinos, or stock speculators that lost their shirts during the dot com bubble?  Why is the housing bubble so special?  The answer is simply that the banks want their money back from people who can’t pay, and they are disguising their greed and grapple for survival as a humanitarian mission to “save the troubled homeowners”.  Give me a break because I don’t want to pay for mortgages that I did not sign for.

So the bottom line is, I don’t think you need to be a renter right now to be angry about the impending giant housing bailout. Currently, the House has passed a $300 billion bill for housing aid which President Bush and the White House is threatening to veto. Unfortunately, old George only has a few months left in office and as long as the Democrats stay in power this housing bailout will probably go on regardless of how many signatures people collect.  Anyway, I hope more bailout bills never go through, but that is probably just wishful thinking.  Meanwhile, I will be a patient and maybe slightly angry renter.

Share This

Today I saw a headline in Boston.com that listed 8 reasons why those under 30 belong to the dumbest generation. I read on, and apparently it’s a gallery based on a new book by Emory English professor Mark Bauerlein titled The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future. Here is a blow by blow of his points with my comments.

1. They make excellent “Jaywalking” targets - Here Bauerlein makes an argument that young people do not know anything beyond friends, work, and Facebook. Well, I know many people older than 30 that do not know anything beyond money, cars, and sports. Basically, I don’t think it’s unique to our generation to focus on things that are narrowly important to ourselves. Jaywalking is a TV show segment that picks out the most hilariously dumb people on the streets, and I have seen Jay find dumb people of all sizes and ages.

2. They don’t read books — and don’t want to, either - I don’t think this generalization could be blanketed onto an entire generation. Some people love to read and some don’t. I am one of those people who used to read almost a book a week, but these days I just don’t have the time to dig through the thousands of books that are written everyday. I do read a lot of news, and I don’t believe that young people don’t want to read books. If we didn’t read books then how do giant bookstores like Amazon sell so many books that are interesting and targeted to our generation?

3. They can’t spell - In this point Bauerlein states that young people’s vocabulary and spelling have been defiled by IMs and text messages. Well, I do a considerable amount of instant messaging every day, and I do use shortcuts sometimes because they are easier to type. Bauerlein seems to miss the point that texting and IMing are forms of communication equivalent to speaking. When you talk to your friends it is completely acceptable to use slang and colloquialisms that are not applicable to formal writing. I think most people I know are aware of this fact and are completely capable of spelling correctly in formal papers and reports even though they IM things like “LOL” and “luv u”.

4. They get ridiculed for original thought, good writing - This is one of the dumbest points I have read. Basically the author states that when a young person actually formally composes something original on MySpace they are ridiculed for their spark of intelligence. Well, guess what, MySpace is not a place for literary greatness, and buddies are ALWAYS making fun of each other on sites like that. My husband writes an extremely intelligent blog about games, and I have never seen him ridiculed on his blog. There is a place for everything, and Bauerlein shouldn’t be scouring MySpace for intelligent discourse.

5. Grand Theft Auto IV, etc.- Ah, here is another required bashing of games and other digital entertainment for the dumbing down of my generation. My husband could probably write a ten page rant about this since he is a video game developer and he gets a bit riled up whenever the media blames video games for the downfall of modern society. Whenever I hear people bashing video games, I wonder if they have ever played a great video game. Yes, there are a lot of dumb games, but there are a lot of dumb books and movies, too. Any piece of entertainment reflects the skill and art of its creators, and I’m sure not all of the trashy pieces of entertainment we see are created by 20 somethings. Anyway, I am pretty sure that the author of this book doesn’t have 1/100th the ingenuity and creativity that goes behind creating a great game.

6. They don’t store the information - Here the author’s point is that young people have access to a lot of information at their fingertips so they don’t make an effort to retain the knowledge they obtain. Instead, they look it up and move on. I don’t think there is anything wrong with this. For example, I am a software engineer by trade, and I don’t make an effort to memorize every defined function in a computer language because things are changing all the time. So when I need to write something I am unfamiliar with I search for functions I need and read documentation. I know pretty much all of my colleagues young and old work the same way. Some of the older people may have stored more in their heads just because they have programmed in a language for a longer period of time, but that doesn’t make them smarter. We don’t store information because there is just so much information we need to know these days. Life isn’t as simple as knowing your multiplication table and this behavior of research instead of memorization is not stupidity. I would argue that it’s actually better than memorization because we constantly obtain updated information.

7. Because their teachers don’t tell them so - Well, this point actually says to me that the teachers are dumb. I have had teachers I needed to correct. The last time this happened was in college in Physics class. There were three problems on a midterm and two of them had wrong answers on the answer key. I had to email the professor and tell him he was wrong. I just want to say that just because there are teachers that do not do their jobs well it doesn’t mean that my generation isn’t learning and thinking.

8. Because they’re young - I made a comment on Can I Get Rich on a Salary saying that it is probably unfair to judge the money habits of generation Y right now because when we are in our 20s we are in a grand stage of transition. Life is confusing and abruptly changing for any generation of people at this age range. Anyway, this is an extremely retarded reason to call an entire generation stupid. It is almost as absurd as calling my friends’ children’s generation dumb just because they are all babies that can’t do anything but poop and eat. I really wonder if Bauerlein admitted how stupid he was when he was young in his book to support this point.

Anyway, I personally know more brilliant 20 somethings than smart older people just because most of my friends are about the same age as me. I researched this Mark Bauerlein a bit and it seems that his students think he is a very condescending guy. I am not surprised, and I am pretty sure he wrote this book to stir up controversy, and also make a bit of money so he is a little less angry about dumb twenty-somethings like me being paid more than a highly educated English professor like him.

Share This

Today as I was driving to work the news did a short report about Homestead High School students going to the 18th annual National Science Bowl sponsored by the Department of Energy. This is a contest where you answer questions about a variety of scientific subjects. Everyone gets a buzzer and you buzz in with your answer for points. It is sort of like Jeopardy, but it’s multiple choice. That news clip stirred up quite a few memories because I participated in that contest when I was in high school and my team made it to the nationals two years in a row after winning the East Bay regionals. We all got an all expense paid trip to Washington DC and had a lot of fun. I would say that was one of the highlights of high school for me.

Even though it has been seven years, I still remember the day of the regionals of the second year I participated. Since it was on a weekend I overslept and my physics teacher’s van was at my door. My teammate knocked on my door and my mom woke me up and I ran down with my hair uncombed and hopped in the van. We won after a few hours of intense competition. A few months later we were flown to DC and participated in the nationals. We met some really weird New Yorkers there. One of the New Yorkers looked so much like one of our classmates that they could be twins. What’s weirder is that they and had the same first name and last initial. I took pictures of him and took it home for comparison. That year my parents actually went to Washington with me just for fun. They had to pay for their trip, but it seems that they liked DC a lot. I really loved touring the Smithsonian and it really takes days to look at everything in those museums and I am so glad they are free for everyone. That year we came in the top 12 in the competition and won $1000 for our school.

Quite a few of my best friends were on the team and we don’t see each other much these days since we all live in different parts of the country now. The girl that’s my best friend is now a bioengineering PhD at MIT, and another best friend is now going to medical school in Cleveland (he still comes to read my blog and leave comments from time to time :D). Another older guy is now doing a geophysics PhD at Harvard. I think another guy is also in grad school for something or other in San Diego. Looking back, I think they have always been the real hardcore science nerds and that is why they are all going to be doctors and scientists now. I think I was on the team because I was quick with a buzzer and I had a lot of random knowledge about rocks, poisons, and diseases. I enjoyed the game and competition, but I always knew that I would not devote my life to science. That is why I am the only one in that club that did not go on to a PhD and I have to say I am quite content with my decision. I also think that my friends are where they need to be, because frankly they are brilliant and maybe one of them will change the world.

So in summary, here are the random thoughts from this session of reminiscing:

1) Science is fun
2) You could win great prizes by being good at trivia and buzzers. Heck, Ken Jennings won over $2 million on Jeopardy.
3) Devoting your life to science isn’t as easy as donating your cadaver

Share This