After a week of settling into my new life down here, I finally got around to trying to make new friends with the locals. In the morning I participated in a youth group thingy after church where I met some nice people. And later in the day I went over to a Stanford dorm for dinner where I met more interesting people. It reminded me a lot of Spuc, ( Read more... )

On Wednesday I gave a talk about university to a grade 11 CS class at my former high-school. I was astonished by the lack of ambition and focus I encountered. Only a handful of students intended to go on to college and fewer still were considering university. Mind you, when I was in grade 11 I had no idea which university I wanted to attend either ( Read more... )

Watching The Constant Gardener tonight got me thinking about how multinationals exploit people in poor countries. Generally they bribe some government officials to turn a blind eye to their activities. That means the problem isn't just due to the corporations trying to boost their bottom line at any cost but due to the corrupt government officials ( Read more... )

When I was asked to write research papers at UW, most of my profs were adamant about us not relying upon the Net for our research; some went so far as to point out that the goood stuff is only to be found in obscure journals with no online presence. This baffles me. Do these journals revel in their exclusivity? If not, why do they not publish ( Read more... )

I just went through a large box of stuff I'd collected over my 6 years at UW & threw out a whole bunch of things that brought memories flooding back from all the crazy times I had at school and on work terms. It's certainly been a long time since I marched into Spuc as a wide-eyed frosh!

If I were thewizard this is where I'd wax poetic for several ( Read more... )

I've been taking a lot of naps over the past several weeks; sometimes as often as thrice a day! Generally, I feel sleepy after eating a meal. Towards the latter half of this term I've been acting on this by napping for anywhere between 30 minutes and a couple of hours. Consequently, I feel well rested while awake. But it seems to be cutting into my ( Read more... )

Design is what has allowed our species to adapt the environment to our desires in ways that no other species ever has. There are two sides to design: the first stems from art, focuses on form/presentation/austhetics, and results in style; the second stems from science, focuses on function/behaviour/usability, and results in engineering. We want ( Read more... )

I skipped out on most of Toast Talk last night because I had to study but I had a few thoughts about the topic: should we all stop eating meat ( Read more... )