hiring engineers

I find our hiring process for software engineers pretty novel. It's based entirely on hiring committees; interviews are done by engineers, who write up feedback reports, and a committee meets to discuss the reports and make a decision on whether to proceed. Also, engineers aren't hired for a specific position or by a specific manager; they are hired first, and then allocated to projects by the engineering directors and VPs. Theoretically, this results in all engineers throughout the company being uniformly brilliant, with the added bonus that they have enough general knowledge to rapidly change projects and/or teams.

I've noticed a couple of possible drawbacks, though. Because all interview candidates get asked the same kinds of interview questions, we tend to hire applicants with breadth rather than depth of knowledge...maybe not always a good thing. I came in listing no C experience on my resume (yes I know, pathetic) but I got asked questions about memory allocation and differentiating between big-endian and little-endian machines. If I had known nothing, I probably wouldn't have been hired; luckily I managed to dredge up some vague knowledge that I had picked up years ago in college.

Also, because the hiring committee needs lots of feedback to work with, since they don't meet the candidates themselves, each candidate goes through a pretty grueling interview schedule. If I remember correctly, I myself went through one phone screen and three onsite days, for a total of 10 technical interviews. In addition, the hiring committees only meet once a week, since they are comprised primarily of engineering management; busy people with lots of non-recruiting responsibilities. The end result is that the overall process can take months, and some applicants just don't want to wait that long.

On a related subject, I seem to be doing interviews all the time. I've been at this job for almost six months now, and I've done 7 training interviews (paired up with a senior engineer) and 11 solo interviews, over the course of the last three months. I've heard from various sources that we have an unofficial policy that every engineering candidate must be interviewed by at least one female engineer. I've also heard that recruiters also make a special effort to have more female engineers on the interview schedule when the candidate is female. I've never confirmed it with HR, but I'm inclined to believe it, since no male engineer that I know has done 18 interviews in 3 months.

I'm also beginning to think that we must be trying very very hard to hire women engineers; 9 out of my 18 interviews have been for women, which is extraordinarily high, considering the normal ratio of male to female engineers. I guess this is a Good Thing, but I sometimes think that we're trying too hard, especially when I phone screen a woman who can't figure out the running time of a simple algorithm, or do an onsite interview with a woman who can't write a method signature in her preferred programming language. I wonder if the hiring committees base their decisions exclusively on feedback ratings and reports, or if they consider the gender of the candidate. I don't like thinking that I might have benefited from some bias; that I'm not as least as good as all the guys. Maybe I'll find out on Friday, when I sit in on my first hiring meeting.

I suck at Chinese

I'm going to be taking Chinese 4 at Foothill College, starting next week.

I must say, their application process is a little daunting for someone who just wants to take one class. A friend who is taking the class with me was jokingly wondering if we could somehow invalidate our existing college degrees by making a mistake on the form.

I also got a call two days ago encouraging me to attend the "new student orientation" this Friday at 8am. The woman seemed a little befuddled when I explained that I have to work during the day. Actually, that's not quite true, I can work whenever I want; it just works out better with other people's schedules if I work during the day.

But, I digress. I guess I thought people took enrichment classes all the time. I wonder what percentage of the students at community colleges are not working towards a degree?

you're not crazy

I'd been having a VPN problem for a couple of weeks now. I'd run a servlet on my machine, try to access it through VPN, and get an "Access Forbidden" error. I'd tried a whole bunch of small tweaks, but nothing worked.

Two days ago, I tried helpdesk, and they spent half an hour having me run through all the solutions I'd tried already. As an aside, I'm glad we have a helpdesk, and they are helpful sometimes, but all too often, their preferred suggestion is to tell me to reboot my Linux(!) machine.

Finally, I filed a sysops ticket. I think the tone of my description must have expressed a little frustration, because I just got a response, and the first line read: Hi, you're not crazy. I must admit, it's good to hear that once in awhile.

weekend in Vegas

When I was booking my plane tickets, it seemed like a good idea to fly to Vegas on a Friday night, stay three nights, and fly back at 5am on Monday morning in time to attend an 11am meeting with an Engineering VP. No, I wasn't smoking anything at the time. I think I still subconsciously have the delusion that if I try hard enough, I can sleep 5 hours a night and function properly, like I did in college. Then again, I don't remember certain college years all that clearly.

This post was written after a weekend of:

- 20+ hours of gambling (up at most $165, down at most $80, net profit $145...take that, Vegas!)
- 1 food coma inducing all-you-can-eat Brazilian BBQ dinner
- 1 Bellagio champagne brunch
- 6-7 hours of being glued to the sports betting section watching opening weekend football
- 6 hours, 6 hours, and 5 hours of sleep, consecutively, plus a 1 hour nap this morning

I still have a 9pm ice hockey game to play tonight. I guess we'll see how far pure adrenaline can go.

Robert E. Lee

I've just started reading The Killer Angels by Michael Sharra. It's a work of fiction set during the Civil War, but I hear it's very close to historically accurate.

Coincidentally, I ran across a blog posting today about combat leadership and how it applies to business, which discussed a scene from that novel:

Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee understood the importance of giving praise along with criticism. At the Battle of Gettysburg, Lee's cavalry commander, Jeb Stuart, failed to provide needed intelligence. Stuart was an exceptional cavalry commander and Lee didn't want to lose him. But he had to make certain that Stuart would not repeat his actions. Gen. Stuart was only 30 and very temperamental. If Lee was not careful in his criticism, Stuart might quit the army.

Here's how he did it. After condemning Stuart's failure in no uncertain terms, Lee said: "There has been a mistake. It will not happen again. I know your quality. You are a good soldier. You are as good a cavalry officer as I have known, and your service to this army has been invaluable. I have learned to rely on your information; all your reports are always accurate. But no report is useful if it does not reach us. And that is what I wanted you to know. Now, let us talk no more of this."

I know the author (not Sharra, the blog author) was trying to make a point about how to learn from General Lee and become a better leader, but to me that anecdote just reinforces my mental picture of Robert E. Lee as a really cool guy. I first read a story about him when I was about 8 years old, and it was pretty flattering. I haven't read anything since then that seriously suggests otherwise; that includes a couple biographies as well as Connie Willis' strangely titled Lincoln's Dreams, which is actually a novel about Lee.

Besides, when I read new articles about JFK and his philandering, I can't help but think that it's easier to have heros that are long dead.

fantasy football 2003

Fantasy football season is starting! So much stress, so much effort, so much pain, and so much fun.

Last season, I had the best team in the league (overall point total, by more than 150pts), and didn't make the playoffs. How did that happen? I played the owner with Shaun Alexander during his 5 TD week. I played the owner with Michael Vick during the Vikings-Falcons game. I played the owner with Quincy Morgan in the last week of our regular season, and thought I had clinched a playoff berth, until Morgan pulled down his third catch of the game for his second TD, as time ran out. I'm hoping conservation of luck applies, this year.

Did you think I was done with that topic? Sorry, I need to dwell on last year's league for another minute, if only for the benefit of my mental health.

Last year, I landed the 5th spot in the draft, which I was happy with. I picked up Ahman Green in the first round, Priest Holmes in the second, Torry Holt in the third, and Deuce McAllister in the fourth. I had crap for quarterbacks all season (Griese, Green, ...) until I picked up the fairly respectable Chad Pennington after he took over for Vinny. I wound up the season with six receivers: Holt, Plaxico Burress (6th round), Laveranues Coles (7th round, and yes I did have to look up the spelling of his name), Hines Ward (free agent), Donald Driver (free agent), and Tai Streets (free agent) in addition to my primo running back core of Holmes, McAllister, and Green. I know, how did I lose that league?

I'm going to attempt to keep my compulsive fantasy news reading in check this year. No, really.

old and ignorant

I'm starting to feel old, and I'm wondering if I'm going to feel old for the rest of my life.

Things that make me feel old:

- my baby brother going to college next month
- having my knees creak and my wrists crack
- meeting up with an old high school friend who's been married for four years
- going to weddings, in general
- my friends graduating from law school and med school

I used to always feel young and ignorant. Now I feel like I have no excuse for my ignorance.

bridge, poker, and driving

Our weekly bridge night, which had been going on continuously for almost a year and a half, seems to have morphed into poker night.

I'm guessing it's because the learning curve has flattened out; we've all figured out the basic conventions, and a couple of more advanced ones, and it doesn't feel like we're improving as much anymore.

Poker, on the other hand, involves cash. There's always an adrenaline kick when there's money on the table.

However, I'm still not fully convinced that even Texas Hold'em is a skill game. There's just too much luck involved; if you're a sucky player and you get great cards you can do fine. In bridge, luck gets factored out because each pair gets compared against a whole bunch of other pairs who have played exactly the same boards. In poker, there's no such comparison.

Speaking of adrenaline, I was talking to someone the other day about getting sleepy while driving. In all the driver's ed classes they tell you when you get tired you're supposed to pull over and take a nap. In practice, most people keep driving, maybe a little more slowly. I have a different strategy, which I developed during my sleep-deprived high school days, when I commuted from Marin to San Francisco. I drive faster, and more aggressively.

Yes, it sounds like a dumb thing to do. But, what happens is, I get on an adrenaline high, and I become very, very alert and focused. When I get out of the car, my hands are usually shaking a little bit, and it takes me a good half hour to relax completely. I think this only works because I like driving, and I like finding paths through mild to moderate amounts of traffic. My trusty Impreza RS, although cheap (no trunk light, I'm not joking), is excellent at handling curves, has a surprising amount of pep for a 165 hp car, and is extremely responsive to both gas and brake. Anyway, I'm sure it sounds crazy, but don't knock it unless you've tried it.

Ocean Beach

Trying out the Blogger Pro upload file feature...

A friend took this when we were at Ocean Beach on July 4th. Pretty, huh?

A's vs Yankees

Yesterday I went to the A's vs Yankees game at the Coliseum. It was a gorgeous day, the game was sold out, and both pitchers (Mulder and Pettitte) were kicking serious ass. I'm not sure what all the stats were, but Mulder struck out a side, and wound up with 5 hits over a complete game. Pettitte, poor guy, pitched a 1-hitter through the 9th, walked one batter, and got yanked for Rivera, who proceeded to lose his first game of the year by giving up a single to Chavez and a walk-off hit to Tejada. That's the second time in three games that Tejada has pulled through in the clutch.

Anyway, I wanted to make a point about how going to games is an extremely exhausting activity. Every time I get back from a game, I just want to shower, sit down on a couch and then not get up until it's time to go to sleep. My theory is it's something about sitting around on the edge of your seat for 3+ hours. It's worse than playing a sporting event in some ways, because you can't actually do anything to affect the outcome (unless you're one of those fanatics who thinks that his/her especially spectacular display of fandom actually makes a difference), but you still have that adrenaline rush. The better (closer) the game is, the more tired you get.

I'm looking forward to seeing the A's make a run for the division. I like the Giants too (rooted for them in '89), but the current A's are more likeable; they're the perpetual underdogs. You can't help but love a team who keeps digging up great prospects, bringing them up through the farm system, having them kick ass for a few short years, and then losing them when they become stars, for lack of money. I heard some guy say that the Yankees bullpen makes more than the whole A's team. I don't know if that's true, but the fact that it's believable makes a point in and of itself.

airlines suck

I'm going to New Zealand! Okay, it's not happening until December, but still, I'm excited. I'm also going to Taipei afterwards, which should be fun; I haven't been in a year and a half already.

I do have to complain about international flight scheduling for a bit, though.

It's much more expensive to book a round-trip fare between two international locations from the US than to book it through a foreign travel agency. This applies even to websites like Orbitz, Travelocity, and Expedia. I don't understand why.

It's much, much more expensive to book a three-legged itinerary from San Francisco to Auckland to Taipei and back than it is to book two round-trips. I guess this is a known oddity. However, the only decently priced round-trip flight from San Francisco to Taipei arrives at 10:05pm, five minutes after the last flight to Auckland departs. Plus, direct flights from Taipei to Auckland only exist on odd dates, and for some reason, the one-stop flights are much more expensive than the direct flights (there's a first!). Anyway, the upshot of the whole thing is that according to my flight plan, I'm leaving San Francisco and not arriving in Auckland until four days later. Yes, some of that is due to crossing the international date line, but it still sucks.

Also, I'm being forced to choose between getting United frequent flier miles (and regaining my Premier status) and saving five hundred bucks. Bleah.

ice hockey returns

I'm playing (non-checking) ice hockey, again. No, I'm not any good, but it's fun anyway.

Luckily there's only one more wedding to go this summer, so I'm not too worried about all the bruises.

Hong Kong protests

I've got lots of stuff to finish before the three-day weekend, so this is going to be short.

When Hong Kong was handed over to China in 1997, some people predicted that everything would be fine, and that Taiwan would soon see that it should also accept the "one country, two systems" proposal. Some other people, mostly Taiwanese people, predicted that everything would go to shit, and the international community would soon see what folly it would be for Taiwan to submit to any kind of Chinese governance. It's still too soon to say, but from anecdotal evidence, many Hong Kong natives are starting to incline towards the latter view.

A friend of mine sent me a forward today that included this NYTimes article: Security Laws Target of Huge Hong Kong Protest.

Her mother had commented:

"Daddy and I were forced to wait in the Victoria from 2:00PM to 6:30PM under the hot sun and heat. The HK police closed the 10 exits except 2 trying to stop the procession of the demonstration. We are among many young students, middle classes and professionals to witness the anger and hopeless feeling toward Tung's government in first hand."

"I wish that this day will be a solid evidence for those Taiwanese people who still wrongly mislead to believe in unification with China will bring a better life. If there is any good outcome came to Taiwanese people due to HK people's massive protest, our hardship on the 7/1 will be well worth it."

'Nuff said.

women's basketball at Oracle

I've joined the women's league at the Oracle Gym again. I'm a little surprised and a little annoyed that we can't get 24 women to sign up this year.

My first thought is that there are just way more guys than girls at Oracle, but this logic doesn't stand up to closer inspection. Let's do the numbers...

The men's 5-on-5 league has 3 tiers (recreational, intermediate, and competitive), each with about 10 teams, with at least 6 players on a team...that works out to over 180 players (probably closer to 200). Did I mention there's also a 4-on-4 men's 6ft-and-over league, a 4-on-4 men's 6ft-and-under league, a 4-on-4 coed league (primarily comprised of men) and at least one 3-on-3 men's league? Granted lots of guys play multiple leagues, but I'm still going to guess that there are at least 500-600 men that play basketball on a regular basis at Oracle, especially if we count all the guys who are too intimidated to play in a league. Of course all the good players show up for lunch pickup games too, so the regular guys have to shoot around at like 2 in the afternoon.

Okay, let's get to percentages. There are about 8,000 employees at Oracle headquarters. Probably 80% of them are men (giving us 6,400 men), so we're looking something on the order of 10% of the men at Oracle playing basketball, even if we assume some of the league players aren't Oracle employees. Let's say conservatively that 6-10% of the men play basketball.

Using our 20% women number, there are at least 1,600 women who can play eight weeks of league ball for $15, and have chosen not to, despite two months of advance notice. Of the 20 people that have signed up, I know of at least 4 (including yours truly) who don't even work at Oracle. So that's 16 women out of 1,600, or 1%. Granted, there are some women who play only in the coed or men's leagues, but I'm going to guesstimate that number at about two or three. It's also possible that some women don't feel that they're good enough to play in the league, but given the level we play at, and the fact that six of us started playing in the league last year with no prior experience whatsoever, that barrier should be fairly low. So optimistically, slightly more than 1% of the women play basketball.

So our conclusion is that proportionally, somewhere between 5 and 10 times more men than women play basketball at Oracle. No wonder the guys always crowd around, they're used to us giving up the court because we don't have enough women to hold it.

So, tonight we're having a scrimmage, in an effort to recruit more people. I'm cautiously optimistic.

evite rules my life

My life is totally driven by evite.

It's a sad story...in the beginning, I tried to resist. As a rule I hate HTML mail, so when I first got evites, I'd just reply and ask the organizer to give me details. As you can imagine, people were lazy and didn't respond, and I was forced to cut and paste the URL into a browser. For awhile after that, I resisted signing up with evite, but finally I figured out that if I created an account, I wouldn't have to cut and paste at all; I could just login to my evite account and all my evites would be displayed on one page. Three years later, I organize any event for more than 5 people with evite, compulsively check replies when I organize an event, use my evite page as a calendar, and am hopelessly lost when evite is down. What am I doing today after work, you ask? I'll have to check with evite. On average I have between 5 and 10 evites in my upcoming events calendar, and a draft or two ready to go.

The thing is, the features that evite offers are really too tempting to resist. My top five favorites:

- seeing when someone has viewed my evite
- offering multiple scheduling options that guests can vote for
- specifying a list of options for things that guests should bring
- privacy options, especially being able to choose if your guests can invite more people, and if so how many
- automatic reminders (somehow i feel less bitchy when i use evite to nag people)

Wow, I sound like an ad for evite, don't I? My biggest criticisms are:

- the UI is just awful...who came up with this color scheme? and lots of preferences are hidden way too deeply
- the site requires cookies to function at all
- there should definitely be a way to say, "copy this evite" and then be able to make small changes (good for recurring events)
- of course, the nasty blinking ads
- the archives only go back about six months, as far as i can tell

I wish that someone would come up with a site that worked like evite but actually had a decent UI.

"Together" and my first Wal-Mart experience

A bunch of us went to go see "Together" last week. It's a Chinese movie directed by Chen Kaige, about a 13-year old violin prodigy and his father. I enjoyed the non-Hollywood-ness of it, even the ending was a bit obvious. Plus, I really love watching movies with great soundtracks, and this one featured lots of "classical" music that I liked, some of which I recognized. I do have to mention the subtitling, which as usual, failed to impress me. I shudder to think of how much I miss when I see other foreign films, when the original language is not Chinese.

Interestingly, I find I understand a fair amount when I watch French movies...and last weekend I went to a wedding where the groom was French, and I was able to understand about 80% of his father's toast. Maybe all those years of high school French weren't a complete waste after all. It's a pity I never learned to speak French properly, or I might actually be able to survive in Paris for awhile, without being derided to death by ticket booth clerks who smirk at my poor attempts to communicate. Yes, that's another story.

I went to Wal-Mart yesterday to pick up a folding table for my party. Two nice things happened:

- I was struggling to put the table on my shopping cart, when a middle-aged woman offered to help me. I'll admit my first thought was, "Yes I need help, but probably not from you" but the two of us managed to get the box on top of the cart. Random acts of kindness, and all that.

- After I spent about 5 minutes coaxing the box to fit in my trunk, I pushed the shopping cart back up to the front door. Another woman was sitting on a bench there, and told me it was very nice of me to bring back the cart. I do like it when other people appreciate my random acts. Yes, I'm silly that way.

I conclude that sometimes people suck, but there definitely times when they don't.

CrisisWeb on Taiwan-China relations

I had a discussion with someone the other day about whether people who don't capitalize are just lazy. Just to prove my point to myself, I'm going to write my posts using proper capitalization, for at least the rest of the month. Here I go...

There's a fairly intelligent and unbiased analysis of the Taiwan-China situation at CrisisWeb, which is the International Crisis Group (ICG) web site.

Those who know me will recognize another one of my favorite subjects, and run away and/or cower in fear.

In the interest of full disclosure:

- My parents were both born and raised in Taipei, Taiwan. All four of my grandparents were schooled under the Japanese occupation, and both my parents under KMT martial law.
- I've been brought up on horror stories about KMT rule. I've read and/or heard about unprovoked killings of civilians during the 2/28 massacre, beating of schoolchildren for speaking native Taiwanese, massive disregard for property rights of local landowners, and general suppression of the educated upper middle classes by the KMT.

That having been said, I recognize my bias, and am able, I think, to semi-objectively evaluate other people's analyses of the current political situation. The ICG makes a major point in each of three reports:

1. Taiwan has been moving "slowly but surely" away from the "one-China" principle, primarily due to increased democratisation and the emergence of the "new Taiwanese" identity.
2. The risk of war remains distant, for two main reasons: Beijing's objectives are "reunification" and economic development, and the first is at odds with the second. China does not have the military force necessary to conduct an effective blockade, which would be the most logical military strategy.
3. Peace may be achieved across the Taiwan Strait if proper measures are taken by Taiwan, China, and the international community. Specific steps are outlined in the report.

I can not agree more with the first point. In fact, this is a point that I often try to explain to people who haven't been to Taiwan recently. There is a real cultural gap between Taiwan and China right now; the political freedom that the people of Taiwan enjoy has become a cherished part of the new Taiwanese identity. In the last presidential election, voter turnout was around 80%, and there were grandparents and parents going to political rallies and protests. I would argue that Taiwanese people appreciate their newfound freedom even more than Americans, who have enjoyed their civil liberties throughout their lifetimes. It's hard to imagine that the people of Taiwan, who have fought for their freedom, and now live in a vibrant democracy, would ever accept any kind of governance by Beijing.

The second point is another one that I have made before. I once posed the idea the Taiwanese government shouldn't try to kowtow to Beijing at all. In fact, it should cause the situation to come to a head right now, rather than to let the status quo drag on until China is a real military threat to Taiwan. If Beijing were forced to attempt a blockade or invasion of Taiwan right now it would most likely fail, and Taiwan might gain sovereign nation status in the eyes of the international community. This would be a major risk for the DPP-led government to take, and I doubt it will happen, but it's an interesting scenario to think about.

The last point about peace being achievable assumes that the Chinese government is or will at some point be willing to take steps to stabilize the situation. I argue that this is a flawed premise, since Beijing has shown again and again that it will always take the hard-line stance towards Taiwan. A few weeks ago, pressure from China on the officials at the Miss Universe pageant caused Miss Taiwan to have to change her sash to say, "Miss Chinese Taipei". China has fiercely opposed the inclusion of Taiwan in the WHO, in spite of the SARS threat and the fact that a WHO entity does not have to be recognized as a nation state. Most disturbingly, after entry into the WTO, China has repeatedly tried to downgrade Taiwan's membership status in the WTO, to the same level as Hong Kong. Unless there are radical changes within the Chinese government, peace will not be achieved in the near future...and every year the Taiwanese people take another step towards a separate national identity.

steve young sighting!

i was eating lunch on the cafeteria patio the other day, when the door opened, and out walked our CEO, with steve young, my second favorite football player of all time (and a bunch of other people who i didn't really look at). they sat down with their lunch trays at a nearby table.

so i promptly regressed into crazy niner fandom, turned around and hissed to a co-worker, omigod, it's steve young!

to which there were several replies:

- are you sure? (yes, he's wearing a visitor badge that says, "Steve Young")
- he's in a car commercial, right?
- which sport does he play? baseball?

i conclude that the sign of a true geek is to not know who steve young is...or at least not know what he looks like.

but now that i think about it, maybe the reason steve young likes to eat here is that no one knows who he is.

and that's not even the coolest celebrity sighting this month. apparently gwyneth paltrow was here last week with coldplay.

this can't be good for productivity.

thomas friedman on globalization

thomas friedman from the new york times was here today to give a talk on globalization.

lots of interesting ideas and opinions, and i want to talk about some of them, but before i start...

i think it's really scary that some people are so charismatic, persuasive, and well-spoken. of course it's to their benefit that they are, but i think there's a real danger that some people will just take everything that they say as fact, without spending a lot of time thinking about it. i think thomas friedman is one of these people; he's obviously very intelligent, very educated, very well-informed, has a lot of interesting opinions and ideas that be believes in very strongly and expresses very persuasively, and i very much enjoyed hearing him speak, but i almost needed to make a concerted effort not to agree with everything he said. other people who came out of the talk actually said that their whole worldview was changed, and that's what started me on this train of thought. what if a person who were less well-intentioned and less well-informed decided to use his speaking skills to convince everyone of some totally crazy idea? i'm sure that's happened before in the course of history. i bet that's why we sometimes look at history books and think, what were these people thinking? the answer is some one man or woman was just very very good at convincing them to do something that seems very wrong, when you think about it clearly enough.

anyway, back to the things he said. the most central point he made was about the US and its power, and why the rest of the world hates us "way more than it should" as he put it. his idea was that the US has become more and more powerful, in terms of cultural, economic, political, and military influence, and during the 1990's this was mostly okay for the rest of the world because although we were a hegemon, we were somewhat benign. we were happy and dumb and making tons of money and our biggest worry was whether our president was sleeping with his interns. after 9/11, we became angry, and as an angry giant the US is much more scary. his theory was that people are angry with the US because we have so much influence over their daily lives, even more than their governments do, and they have had no say giving us that power. so there's kind of a resentment that is created, not necessarily on a conscious level.

i think that's one possible explanation, but maybe it gives the US too much credit. i think to a large extent the US does consciously meddle with other nations, and sometimes we don't really know what we're doing. obvious examples are afghanistan (when we were helping the people who eventually became the taliban) and argentina (when we essentially helped instill a dictator). yes we have cultural and economic influence also, but it also seems like we feel free to use our political and military power more than any other powerful nation.

for example, friedman's argument that we should have gone to war with iraq, not for whatever reason the bush administration was espousing, but because the middle east is a factory for undeterrable threats (terrorists) and we need to put a functioning government somewhere in the middle east so that failing nations will have an example to follow...it's interesting and makes a lot more sense to me than rumsfeld's rambling, but that argument seems to try and draw a line in the middle of a grey area. for example, should we have the right to pressure china into free press, because their efforts to conceal SARS cases have resulted in a worldwide epidemic? it's a similar case; if we have the right to invade iraq because we are being hurt by something that their government has done, do we have the right to invade, or otherwise pressure china?

after hearing talks like this i'm always tempted to run out and go buy some books on world history and politics, but then i remember that i'm not any good at reading non-fiction. i always have to work to finish any book that's not a biography or a novel, and i doubt i get as much out of it as i could (or should).

on a completely separate topic (well, perhaps not completely separate) i've always been very impressed with Rilla of Ingleside (by L.M. Montgomery) and its depiction of the Canadian home front during WWI. recently i've been looking for more fiction set during WWI...after looking around quite a bit, i've been pretty much unsuccessful. i guess i'll keep looking.

encouraging women scientists (and engineers)

okay this is one of the (many) rants that i store in my brain and spew at unsuspecting victims.

i don't understand the concept of having conferences, or seminars, or lectures, to tell women why they don't like math, science, or computers. in fact, a lot of times these presentations are made to an audience that is full of technical women, or girls who are already interested in math and science, and the presenter ends up "preaching to the choir".

if i were a 15-year old girl, and i was fairly good at math and science but not sure what i wanted to do yet (which i was, once) and then i was bombarded by the message that women aren't generally good at the sciences, and they have a lot of obstacles, and the world is unfair in such a way that diverts women from technical fields, how would i react? i can think of two types of reactions:

- i could think, gee why are all these people trying to keep me from math and science, want to be a "rebel" and "defeat the system" and so forth, and plunge myself into the technical world

- i could think, wow i never thought about all these problems, i just thought i liked physics (or chemistry, or whatever). now that i know there are so many awful obstacles in my way, do i really want to go into this field? or do i want to just choose another, perhaps slightly less interesting field with less resistance?

i'm not sure the first reaction can be sustained over a the course of a career, and of course the second one is completely counter to the intent (i think) of these presentations.

i'm an engineer, i've always enjoyed science, and i never went to these kinds of events. yes, in college, my classes were filled with guys. this wasn't really an issue for me. if someone had pointed it out to me when i was there (wow, look! you're one of seven girls in a 75 person class!) i don't know what i would have done. maybe get uncomfortable with it. maybe decide to switch to a field where i don't have to be singled out as a token female or considered as a role model for young girls, and i don't have to consider the possibility i got hired (or accepted, or chosen) to fulfill some kind of unofficial quota.

i know the intent behind these conferences is to encourage women, and yes, it is a problem that many women don't consider going into engineering or science. i'm not sure what the solution is, maybe do something to raise awareness among all the parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles who give 5-year old girls Barbie dolls instead of radios, or maybe do something about the teachers who unconsciously call on guys more than girls in math class. but i really don't think the solution is to group together a bunch of women who already have a predisposition towards the technical world, and analyze in detail all the ways that they're different from the men. maybe they'll just resent it, because they don't think they are all that different. i know i don't.