absonant

Now on Substack!

noreply@blogger.com (ajbc) — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 12:00:00 +0000

After a long hiatus from blogging, I’m starting again on substack!

Great Aunt Elva's Zucchini Relish

noreply@blogger.com (ajbc) — Fri, 11 May 2018 14:00:00 +0000

Zucchini is something that gardeners often get in abundance. We'll get so much that we don't know what to do with it all. Your partner will get sick of zucchini bread. Neighbors will start saying no to spare zucchini. It gets ridiculous. I was whining about this problem a few years back and my mom shared my Great Aunt Elva's recipe for zucchini relish. It's a bit of work, but it's a great way of using up the extra zucchini in a way that you can use during the winter, gift more easily, and just enjoy in a different way! Thanks, Mom!

Great Aunt Elva's Zucchini Relish

10 cups ground (in a food grinder) zucchini squash (usually 4 large zucchinis, peeled, sliced in half, seeds removed--then put though food grinder, raw)

4 cups ground onions (about 6 onions)--peel and wash good and put through food grinder

4 cups green bell peppers (6, clean out seeds and cut in half)

1 red bell pepper (cleaned out seeds and cut in half)

Grind all of the above and put in 6 Tablespoons canning salt.

Mix all of the together and set overnight in refrigerator (cover with dish towel).

In the morning, the water will have come out of the veggies. Rinse well through a wire collander and push out all the liquid. Then rinse well again and push out all the water/fluid (Aunt Elva says this is really important or else the relish comes out too liquidy).

In a large bowl combine:

1 tsp tumeric

1 tsp dry mustard

2 tablespoons cornstarcdh

1 tsp black ground pepper

1 tsp celery seed

1 1/2 cups apple cider vinegar

4 1/2 cups sugar

Mix the above first, then add the zucchini mixture to it. Put in a large pan, stir well. Add a pinch of salt. Boil for 20 minutes, stirring constantly.

In the meantime have your jars ready and sterilized. I won't reiterate all the normal canning precautions, but follow them. Put the relish into the jars and wipe around the edges to make sure they are totally clean for a good seal. Don't touch the lids and process in boiling water for 10 minutes. Anyway, that is basically the recipe. Follow the regular canning stuff from there and enjoy!

an old quilt made new

noreply@blogger.com (ajbc) — Sun, 01 Oct 2017 22:03:00 +0000

It's been really long since I've posted anything. I've been focusing on my 5-and-a-half-month-old and on work (I'm going on the academic job market this fall), so things have been a touch busier than they used to be. I have a bunch of half-written pieces, most of which will probably never see the light of day, but I'm going to just share something simple: I finished a quilt yesterday! My mom helped with the actual quilting while she was out visiting several weeks ago, since I'm trying to finish up a bunch of half-finished craft projects. This half-done problem seems to apply to many of my hobbies...I guess there's a reason I joke that my hobby is hobbies. Anyway, this is the final product!

a journey toward parenthood

noreply@blogger.com (ajbc) — Sun, 15 Jan 2017 02:26:00 +0000

Nathaniel and I have wanted a child for a while, but we also wanted to wait until I was far enough along in my PhD program that I would not be sabotaging myself academically and professionally. So after I passed my general exams (the Master's benchmark), I went off birth control and started tracking my cycles. I was pretty confident it would only be a few months—most couples get pregnant within 3 or 4 months of trying.

A year of ovulation and pregnancy tests, temperature charting, and prenatal pills (just in case) later, we went in for the infertility diagnosis so we could move on to treatment. That first year of trying was emotionally draining, but the following year of treatment was far, far worse.

We learned that my body produced too much FSH (follicle simulating hormone), which usually means that a woman has a low egg count. Even if one could control the FSH somehow, the underlying issue of too few eggs would remain. My day three FSH reading was usually around 24 or so. Less than 9 is considered normal for childbearing age—to put things in perspective, my FSH reading was what should be more typical of a premenopausal woman in her mid forties, and I was only 28. Over 19 means that many fertility centers won't even try to help you with your own eggs. It also meant that our Aetna insurance was not guaranteed to cover anything, but we could appeal and make a case for coverage.

At first, I was still optimistic. Of course I would get pregnant, right? But then I didn't really respond to the pills they gave me to "ripen" more eggs. So we moved onto the more powerful injectable medications. In addition to going in to get my blood drawn every few days (which made me look like I was shooting heroin) and getting intrauterine ultrasounds regularly, I learned to give myself shots in my stomach to both encourage egg development and induce ovulation. And despite all the needles and early morning poking and prodding, I still only produced one egg at a time. Well, once I produced a lucky two. Dealing with insurance was also beastly, though our center handled the brunt of it.

At some point during this process, Nathaniel and I realized that we might never be able to have our own biological children and we each went through our own depressions. I was angry when television shows, movies, and books used pregnancy as a plot point, especially for a single sexual encounter. I had a hard time being happy when friends and family announced their own pregnancies. I had to avoid Facebook because everyone seemed to be talking about their kids. Church was torture, especially when I listened to lessons or talks from the pulpit on parenting or families. People unknowingly teased us about not wanting kids or asked us when we were going to have them or if we wanted them. I had been that person previously, asking inappropriate personal questions, but now I know better. As the receiver, I would respond with a smile, then go home and cry.

Then our story took a happy twist: after about two years of trying, I was pregnant. We were actually taking a break from fertility treatment and were not at all expecting it. N pulled the test out the trash and squinted at it to see the first signs, and I took a dozen more tests through the following days. A huge burden had been lifted, and the grief had passed, replaced by joy. I was looking up strollers and other baby equipment, and making plans on when to tell everyone. I figured out how much weight I needed to gain. I found a doctor and had my first appointment. I got rid of my sharps container and used kitty litter to safely get rid of my remaining injectable medications.

I reminded myself that not everyone gets this lucky. That year of grief taught me a tiny sliver about what it would be like to go through a lifetime of infertility. It wasn't until I thought I had broken down every single emotional barrier that I got pregnant, or so I told myself. I needed to gain that humility—I needed to be okay with every option, including adopting (which was easy—I was planning on adopting if I didn't get married), having a special-needs kid, or getting an egg donor (this last one was the hardest). I needed to want to be a parent so badly that I would realize that being a parent isn't about defining my own identity, but about being willing to fill that role for a child who needs it. I thought I had come so far.

And then I miscarried at just before 8 weeks.

I was in denial. I kept reading online about how you can bleed and still be pregnant, even after passing pretty substantial blood clots. I was in contact with my doctor, and holding out hope for the ultrasound in a few days. I was tense as the technician looked. After a while she apathetically told me that she didn't have anything to show me, then left me (without bothering to send in my equally anxious husband) to go talk to the doctor. There I was, half naked and alone, with the devastating confirmation that I was no longer pregnant. The icing on the cake was the terrible break-up music being pumped over the speakers. After a while, she came back and, despite my having told her about the miscarriage concerns, she tried to tell me that maybe I just wasn't as far along as I thought. I might have visibly rolled my eyes at her—I had been monitoring everything pretty carefully and knew when I had ovulated. The baby was gone.

We took a while to mourn the loss, but eventually the grief passed. We tried to look at the silver lining: now we knew I could get pregnant. And so it was never as hard as it was before the pregnancy. The darkest times had passed.

We decided that we were going to be parents one way or another, and that if I couldn't get pregnant again, then we would adopt. We had the capacity to be loving parents, and we wanted to use that capacity. Some infertile couples end up using that love through volunteering or their jobs, but given the nature of our careers, adoption seemed like the best fit for us. (Though we understand that it's not the right choice for everyone.) That made things easier some days, but it was still a question of when: when should we make the transition from trying for biological children to trying for adoptive children? Not yet, we felt, especially with so much uncertainty ahead with graduation looming and possibly new jobs on the horizon. We didn't want to get all set up with the approval process only to relocate.

I started up acupuncture, since my insurance covered it. I also consumed plenty of Chinese medicinal teas, many of which were incredibly bitter. Eventually I stopped going because it was a lot of effort for no obvious benefits—I imagine it could work for some people, but it wasn't my thing.

My church asked me to speak on Mother's day. I thought long and hard about it, and decided to do it. I basically just cried continuously, but told everyone that Mother's day can be hard for some people. It can be hard for people who have lost their mothers, or don't get along with their moms, but also for women who have never married, who can't have children, or who have lost a child. I told them that we were struggling to have kids and that biological children just might not be in the cards for us. But I also gave thanks for my mother, grandmothers, and other women who have touched my life. I learned to turn despair into gratitude. Or at least to try to do so.

Eventually, we went back to western medicine. We were going to do maximum dosage injectables on an IUI cycle to see how I responded. If that went well, we could move to IVF. But I didn't respond well. At full dosage, I still only produced one egg, which meant that IVF wasn't worth the risk. I took a home pregnancy test at the end of that cycle and saw a very slight line, but then I bled the following day. Because the medications can mess up urine tests, it's not clear if it was actually a pregnancy, albeit short lived.

When we next met with the doctor, she told us that we should only try a few more IUIs on low dosage oral medication. She said we had maybe a 5% chance. Imagine taking twenty alternate universe versions of this situation: only one will be successful. It's about the chances of rolling a total of 3 with two dice on a single throw. It's low.

We wanted things to be more black and white. We wanted "you can't have children" to make the transition to adoption easier. But they kept stringing us along. Adoption comes with its own set of emotional challenges, such as a mother choosing you to adopt her child, then deciding that she wants to keep her child. Of course she has that right, but it's still difficult for the potential adoptive parents. So we pushed it down the road...we decided that when we moved away from the area in a year or two we would begin the adoption process. After about three years of trying, we were ready to be parents, but we could wait a little longer to make the logistics easier.

On another break from treatment, due to scheduling issues, I took another pregnancy test. It was ever so lightly positive. I tested again in the following days, and it was clearer: I was pregnant again. But there was not a lightness or joy this time. Instead, I felt mostly dread. When would the miscarriage be? Every twinge was a sign of loss. Here comes the sorrow, here comes the despair. I couldn't let myself enjoy it, at least not until I heard the heartbeat, or so I told myself. But in the meanwhile, I was looking up really morbid statistics, like the chances of stillbirth or late-term miscarriage. I even worried about having a child that would die young.

It wasn't until around the time I got a call from my nurse at the infertility center that I started to get excited. She was calling to check in and make the plans for the next treatment cycle. I was in a meeting at the time, so I listened to her long message with detailed instructions on how I was going to need to get medications from two different pharmacies (a standard one for the pills and an online order for an injectable to induce ovulation). So I left her a message in return to say let's put a hold on that for now, and let's where this pregnancy goes.

The following day she asked me to check in with my insurance to see if they would cover early monitoring with them, and for the first time insurance was a breeze. The insurance guy I talked to was incredibly helpful and cheerful, and it looked like everything was going to be covered.

I think there's something about telling other people that starts to make things real, even if those people are medical professionals and not friends or family. We still were not really to tell loved ones yet, since in some ways, we would rather have waited to find out ourselves until things were more certain—the roller coaster of excitement and loss is exhausting.

The first ultrasound mid-week 5 went as expected—we saw the amniotic and yolk sacs. But mid-week 6, I had some severe cramps in the early hours of the morning. Here it comes. N went for a walk with me, and we watched a Star Trek episode in the middle of the night to get our minds off things. But the cramps turned out to be digestional, and N had similar ones soon after. Still, it put us on edge, to be reminded of how suddenly miscarriage could come.

Two days later, we went in for the next ultrasound, and saw and heard a heartbeat of 116bpm. That meant the miscarriage risk was around 18%. It put us a little at ease, and even encouraged us to get a little excited, but the risk was still there. Risk will always be there.

We told our immediate families and some close friends. The weeks ticked by. I defended my PhD and graduated. Now I'm 28 weeks along, and everyone who sees me in person can tell I'm pregnant. Frankly, we're lucky. There are many people who deserve to be parents and don't get that chance. And while I am very happy with out current situation, I would never give up the three years of heartache—it taught me some much needed empathy. The pain of this journey may fade, but we won't forget it. I think it makes me a better person, even if I still have a long way to go, because it's stripped away a lot of my desire to judge others and taught me about how to be more sensitive to others' hidden experiences.

For instance, I developed a much deeper respect for those that become parents either through an egg or sperm donor, or through foster care and adoption. Being a parent is about the love you give your child, and while giving birth and breastfeeding are ways of showing that love, they are only some ways to do so. And biological similarly does not necessarily help you be a better parent. Again, it's all about the love and care you give the child. This applies even if you aren't a guardian, but are an aunt or uncle, teacher or friend—if you have the love of a parent, you are a parent in your heart.

I also learned that there are so many kinds of infertility that it isn't really helpful or encouraging to share a success story for a type of infertility that doesn't match what the person is going through. Like don't try to inspire someone with a story about surrogates when the person is having trouble making their own eggs. There are a bunch of articles about dos/don'ts. Even if you think you don't know anyone struggling with having kids, whether it's secondary or primary infertility, or recurrent miscarriages, I guarantee that you do. About 6% of married women of reproductive age struggle with infertility. That means that if you have 100 female acquaintances that get married at some point, about 6 of them have, are, or will struggle with this.

Miscarriage is a whole 'nother ballpark. The stats on that are a little trickier, because most miscarriages are mistaken for periods. Recurrent miscarriages (3 or more) happen in about 1% of women, but it feels like almost every woman has a miscarriage story, either her own, or one from a sister, mother, or close friend. Miscarriage is incredibly common. I say this not to diminish the emotional impact of a miscarriage, but to remind folks that 1) if you've gone through a miscarriage, please remember that you aren't alone and there are people out there that want to love and comfort you and 2) someone you know and love has gone through a miscarriage, even if you don't know about it—use that as a reminder to always be kind, sensitive, and loving.

There are also people who don't want kids, but get pregnant accidentally or feel constant social pressure to have kids. There are infertile women who judge those who get abortions, and people on birth control who judge those who are pregnant. It's so, so messy.

The more open I am with my own history, no matter the context, I find that many other women have their own stories to tell, be it about infertility, miscarriage, or being pressured to have kids. And men aren't immune—just because they might not go through the same physical processes doesn't mean they don't feel the emotional pain.

So if you don't know, don't assume. Just try to understand, but be very careful with your personal questions. I learned not to ask questions about having kids directly—what you think might just be an ice breaker could actually hurt someone a lot. I'm sure I am guilty of this in many domains, not just infertility, but my go-to ice breaker is now some variant of the vague, "So, what are your interests?" (If you've made it this far, I'm probably preaching to the choir.)

And yes, you shouldn't need to tip-toe around worrying about everything that could possibly offend someone. As long a you cultivate true love and respect for other people, that will shine through. But that kind of love requires putting in the patient effort to understand our fellow men and women, just as one should to understand a child.

I'm putting my story out there because I believe it's important for these issues to be more public. When you think you're alone, it hurts all the more. But you aren't alone.

Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter: Let's fix this mess

noreply@blogger.com (ajbc) — Mon, 11 Jul 2016 02:34:00 +0000

I have stayed silent on this issue because I haven't known what to say. I didn't know how to begin: how could I contribute anything meaningful to the thousand of voices saying things more eloquently and passionately? And then I read this today: a letter from a mixed race woman to quiet white friends. This made me realize that not saying anything is a way of saying something.

So I want to say this: black lives matter and blue lives matter. The recent (and not-so-recent) killings in both directions are completely unacceptable. While I haven't been personally impacted by these events, I have loved ones on both sides, as do many people. But they aren't even "sides"; as Trevor Noah said, you can be pro-cop and pro-black.

Something is obviously broken, and I want to do my part to fix it. For now, maybe all I can do is acknowledge that there is a problem and try to understand it better. But if everyone did that, we would already have made a lot of progress.

The question isn't whose lives matter. They all matter. The real question is: what will you do to make the world better and safer?

Edit/addition: I just wanted to be clear that while "all lives matter," I wasn't trying to dismiss the BLM movement in any way. BLM focuses on making the world better and safer for black citizens. This is very necessary, and if successful, they will end up helping the world in more ways than they originally intended. All I was trying to say is that it doesn't matter who you're trying to help, as long as you are doing something productive and not just dismissing the situation.

the first of the season

noreply@blogger.com (ajbc) — Tue, 10 May 2016 00:01:00 +0000

Today I harvested the first greens of the season—baby spinach and pea shoots. The garden has started off lovely.

There are days when I can't believe it's not June yet, and then there are days I feel stuck in March. But mostly, I just feel tired, and the date doesn't mean anything.

I started teaching seminary in January. For those unfamiliar, it's a 6am religion class for high school students. At first, it was very fun, but as time drew on, my excitement turned to exhaustion. I love deep study of religious texts, but getting up early is not my strong suit.

Combine that with working in the youth program (a second church job), along with something about finishing my PhD in 2016, and you get a stressed, sleep-deprived woman. When I'm not worrying about implementation bugs in my statistical inference algorithm, I'm worried about teens cutting themselves. It's fun.

I'm trying to find some balance now. N is helping me so much; one thing he's doing is teaching seminary two days a week. I need to start doing more things that aren't work and church. Gardening qualifies.

Suicides and "The Policy"

noreply@blogger.com (ajbc) — Mon, 25 Jan 2016 18:39:00 +0000

For those of you who aren't aware, the LDS church instituted a policy regarding LGBT families back in November. One of the major criticisms of this policy is it could potentially increase the suicide rate of LGBT Mormons. And recently, some numbers have been thrown around about the number of LGBT Mormon suicides since the policy was instituted. I haven't fact-checked these, but as of January 23, the numbers I've seen were around 32.

I don't understand the policy, and I don't particularly want to defend it, but I do believe in statistics. The number of suicides alone is not enough to say that the policy has caused any change in suicidal behavior. We need to compare to the number of LGBT Mormons who would have done the same if there were no new policy announced.

We can't actually know what would have happened, but we can estimate it. Ideally, we'd have data on LDS LGBT suicides rates, but I couldn't find anything quantitative. So let's assume that most of these cases are Americans, and the average suicide rate in the US is 0.0211% per year, or 0.00451% of the population in the same 78 day period. The church reports around 6,466,267 members in the United States. This means that, if Mormons are typical in their suicide rate (which they seem not to be), there should be around 285 Mormon suicides in that same time period. Around 3.4% of the adult population identify as LGBT, so that takes the estimate down to about 10 suicides.

All these numbers come from Wikipedia, so I'm using questionable sources, but I didn't want to put too much time into this. But with this very loose estimate of suicide rate, it seems there would be a tragic increase—a 220% increase. That seems a little too large to be believable to me.

We could mirror stats on Jewish LGBT youth to help account for the fact that LGBT folks in religious communities are more likely to attempt suicide. Along these lines, if we assume there are 219,853 LGBT Mormons and that they are four times more likely to commit suicide than national average, that would put our estimate closer to 40 suicides in the same time range—this would mean that there was actually a decrease in the suicide rate since the policy was enacted. This may not be as surprising as it sounds, since there was significant backlash against the policy, so LGBT Mormons may have actually received a surge of support from friends and family.

The point I'm trying to make is that it is very, very difficult to make any causal attributions in this case (or in general). Suicide is incredibly sad regardless of cause, and I also mourn that any person could feel rejected by their religion. We must take steps to help prevent suicide, and we must be loving and welcoming members of our respective communities. But part of knowing what steps to take is to get real data on what's happening, not just jumping to the worst conclusions. Big changes require strong evidence. And probably lots of hugs in the meanwhile.

HDF5: where have you been all my life?

noreply@blogger.com (ajbc) — Mon, 18 Jan 2016 16:42:00 +0000

Nathaniel introduced me to HDF5 around the winter holidays (because, yes, that's the kind of thing we talk about while on vacation), but I just started using in in earnest this past week via h5py. I may never go back to plain text data storage if I can help it—we'll see if I can convince you too.

This is a script that simulates a big matrix off random data, writes in both formats, and reads from both formats. The syntax is similar for both.

To compare h5py against plain text, I ran the above (plus timing code added in) 100 times with different random data. Here are the average results.

	plain text	h5py
writing	9.44 sec	0.0634 sec
reading	7.94 sec	0.0051 sec
row access	3e-5 sec	6e-4 sec
col access	1e-6 sec	0.016 sec
file size	239 MB	77 MB

If your data is small enough or you need to access almost all of it repeatedly, plain text files might still be good for you. I usually sample rows from large datasets that eat memory like chocolate cake. So for almost everything I do, h5py is the clear winner.

A letter to potential Trump supporters

noreply@blogger.com (ajbc) — Sat, 02 Jan 2016 01:52:00 +0000

Dear potential Trump supporter,

Let me introduce myself: I'm a politically moderate American citizen. I know that I am moderate because I went to an incredibly liberal college and am a graduate student at a reasonably liberal university. Meanwhile, the church that I attend is strongly conservative—this means I regularly witness both sides of the political spectrum. I do not belong to a political party, and all I want (politically) is for the leadership of this country to make the United States of America the best country it can be.

The reason I am writing to you today because we are allies in this. If you are considering supporting Trump in 2016, you see some appeal in his call to "Make American great again!"

In my opinion, none of the leading presidential candidates are great this year. Clinton's lack of honesty is particularly upsetting, if unsurprising for a politician. But I would vote for her over Trump, and I want to explain why.

It all comes down to fear. I know that the recent terrorist attacks have been frightening, and that the idea of an influx of refugees can be unsettling to some, but we cannot be afraid of change. The world has always been constantly changing, and the real challenge is not to resist change straight out, but to use it to shape our world for the better. All of our ancestors have felt fear and weathered change—from the men and women of the Revolutionary War to displaced Native Americans, from 1960s Civil Rights Movement activists to the refugees of far too many wars. Change has shaped our history and shaped us as individuals. Look back on your life and notice that your proudest moments most likely come from working hard and having the courage to overcome your fears—so too with our country.

My main objection to Trump as a political candidate is that he sensationalizes this fear and uses it to gain media attention and support. Instead of encouraging us to have courage and find real, lasting solutions, he fans the flame of fear, then claims that he is the one to take it away with proposals that isolate large swaths of the population. This is not the dynamic I want to have with my President. I don't mind brutal honesty—in fact, that's one of the things I admire about Christie—but it is not acceptable to isolate citizens and make them feel uncomfortable in their own country. How would you feel if your religion or ethnicity were singled out in a negative way? We need a leader who is honest and can solve difficult problems without resorting to pointing fingers at demographic groups, especially not vulnerable ones like recent immigrants and refugees.

Some of my ancestors came over from England before the Revolutionary War and others were more recent immigrants from Poland—but all of my ancestors were immigrants to America. Some sought religious freedom as they crossed the Atlantic Ocean as Protestants or as they walked across the Great Plains as Mormon pioneers—they were religious refugees in their day. How can America be great if we treat the modern equivalents of our ancestors with disdain?

So here is my plea to registered Republicans and Democrats alike: don't make me choose between Trump and Clinton. I would love to see a candidate I can support with confidence. Better yet, I want to vote with regret, knowing that either candidate would "do our country proud," just in different ways. But as it stands, it looks like I will vote with a different kind of regret, knowing that neither candidate can push our country toward the excellence it so rightfully deserves.

I don't want to see America revert to some old greatness. I want it to continually improve, becoming greater and greater with time, just as individuals should strive to be better with each passing day. That doesn't mean indulging in new ideas without thought, nor does it mean retrenching to some idealized past. We need to find the path that balances old and new, conservative and liberal, and just and merciful to make America not just great, but exceptional.

Sincerely,

A registered voter

Black box variational inference for gammas

noreply@blogger.com (ajbc) — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 19:45:00 +0000

Whoa, this has been a long blogging hiatus for me. I have no excuses other than I've been enjoying life and working hard. So not excuses, reasons.

I return with a super light-and-fluffy post to share a guide to black box variational inference for gamma-distributed latent variables. BBVI is very powerful, but I was having trouble applying it to gamma variables, so I asked Rajesh (its creator) for some tips. I wrote the guide to try out his tricks on a very simple model and share them with other folks that might be having similar issues. Have fun, ya'll.

the fastest way to embed fonts in a PDF (for me)

noreply@blogger.com (ajbc) — Thu, 16 Jul 2015 15:07:00 +0000

I needed to submit a PDF today with all fonts embedded. I'm working on a Mac with TexShop, and after much angsty Googling, I found lots of answers that seemed to work for other people, but for one reason or another, weren't working for me.

This is what I ended up doing: I created the PDF like usual with TexShop (without all the fonts embedded...I'm looking at you, Helvetica). Then, I used pdf2ps to convert it to a postscript file, and then Adobe Distiller to convert back to a PDF (with all fonts embedded). There may be other ps to pdf options that do the font embedding (Dstiller isn't free), but I was sure Distiller did, and I was on a timeline.

This is the PDF equivalent of "just reboot it." It's silly that embedding fonts is such a messy process.

An Insider's Spain

noreply@blogger.com (ajbc) — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 00:36:00 +0000

Way back in May, a week after I submitted a paper (which got in!) and a two days after Nathaniel gave his final oral presentation for his dissertation, we headed off to Spain! It was a very different sort of vacation, as Nathaniel grew up in Madrid and has an insider's perspective and also lots of friends still living there.

The first day, Nathaniel was actually a little quiet—memories started flooding in as soon as we hit the Madrid airport, and included things as small as being on a particular ramp or hearing the recorded metro voice. We spent the afternoon walking in the Retiro park, eating bocadillos, looking the book shops, street vendors and performers, and just generally people watching. Dinner was at Casa Mingo, where Nathaniel's family used to go regularly.

This one is for my mom, the Iris junkie.

The following day, we saw the royal palace, walked through the downtown, saw the museo del Prado, and visited the botanical gardens in Retiro, which had an abundance of irises and other flowers in bloom. In the evening , we had dinner with a bunch of Nathaniel's friends from school. It was fun to meet them, joke around, and just have a relaxing evening. Sunday was more memories: we visited Nathaniel's old church congregation, walked by his old apartment and school, and met with another dear friend.

The following day, we left Madrid, which began a very different phase of the trip. We did some hiking and drove down to Toledo. There, we saw the El Greco museum, which has both art and living spaces restored to late 16th century style. We also saw a cathedral, tapestry museum, Jewish museum, and an Alcazar which had been converted to the most elaborate military museum I've ever seen. Toledo also has a marzipan factory, so I had to put some in my mouth.

Then, off to Córdoba! After dinner, we had tea and sweets in cute little Moroccan tea shop. The following dat we saw the Mezquita, which was thoroughly strange. It was once a mosque, but a cathedral had since been built in the center, and services were going on while we were there. The guide brochure had a strong catholic bias, with only one of six panels devoted to its Muslim history, most of which read a little bit like "it was a church, and then the Muslims tore that down and built a mosque, and so we feel totally justified in making it a cathedral, because it was once a church. Do you hear that? We were here first." I exaggerate, of course, but it was very defensive.


Mosque-cathedral hybrid.	Just a cute alley we found.

We also saw a roman water wheel, and another alcazar, which was a child's dream fort with lovely garden and a fun irrigation system. I would let you guess who was dorking out about what, but the pictures give it away.


Nathaniel dorking aout about irrigation.	Me dorking out about flowers.

Next up was Granada. We arrived in the evening, caught a flamenco show, and watched the sun set over Alhambra. We got up early the next day because Alhambra tickets sell out quickly, and that was the major reason we were there. Thankfully, we got to see it, and it was both amazingly elaborate and extensive. When I wasn't cooing over the gardens, I was on a mission to find all 17 wallpaper groups, which I'll post about later. After we spent most of the day in Alhambra, we took a quick hike and then headed over to Huelva, where Nathaniel had another classmate (Charli) we were going to stay with.

Orange and cream colored pomegranate blossoms.

We used Huelva as a launching point to see Sevilla. There we saw yet another cathedral and alcazar; the latter we recently recognized in a Game of Thrones episode (Dorne). We also saw an amazing face-off between a duck and a peacock. The duck was apathetically looking for food while the peacock was aggressively shaking its feathers at the duck. It went on for about 10 minutes before we moved on. Eventually we joined up with our hosts Charli and Laura who encouraged us to do silly touristy things. That evening, it was Charli's goal to present me with food I would refuse. We began with caracoles (snails), then proceeded to tiny clams, a large octopus tentacle, and finished with little squid. I ate everything, but by the time I got to the squid, I was very full, so only had one.

Charli's idea.

After departing from Charli and Laura's place the next morning with bellies full of fresh churros dipped in hot chocolate, we made a quick stop at the replicas of Christopher Columbus's ships, and then headed to Segovia. There, we marveled at the massive Roman aqueduct and had dinner at the famous (both within the Chaney family and without) Restaurante Jose María, which lived up to every expectation. Jose María himself even came by our table to ask how things were.

For some reason, every statue of Christopher Columbus we
saw has him pointing.

Ordesa was up next—it was a bit of a drive to the park, as it is on the French border. There we spent three nights up in the mountains. We saw beautiful wildflowers, and families of chubby marmots and sprightly mountain goats. The rock formations were simply stunning—the beauty of Ordesa cannot properly be put into words. I'll just put up a bunch of pictures instead.

Roman bridge.

This waterfall fascinated Nathaniel.
It came out of the side of the rock.

Looking hardcore with my ice pick.

Despite the snow, it was hot.
And because of the snow it was bright.
So we build this shelter for lunch
after deciding an igloo would take too long.

The gap tooth in the background is a pass,
with France on the other side.

His turn to look hardcore.

But I needed the last word in hardcoreitude.

After hiking, we made our way down to Barcelona, which felt far more foreign than I expected, probably due to minor language barriers. We had a lovely evening with Nathaniel's brother, who was there on business, then saw the old city and the Sagrada Familia the following day. At first I was hesitant to go inside the basilica, as it reminded me of a drippy sand castle, but inside, the architectural mastery was shown to its fullest, as the colored glass windows cast fantastic shadows over smooth geometric shapes. The day after, we saw Castell de Montjuïc and the area surrounding the Olympic grounds.

Like any long trip, I was ready for the routine of home at the end, but I was less exhausted than trips usually make me. I think this was due to our slower-than-usual pace and much of it being already familiar to Nathaniel. If we are blessed with the ability to do so, I would love to make Spain a regular vacation destination for us, returning every five or six years. It has a piece of home.

Let's end with this awesome flower we saw in Barcelona.
Two petals are each half pink and half white.

What does it mean to be a millennial?

noreply@blogger.com (ajbc) — Tue, 19 May 2015 15:05:00 +0000

There's a problem with labels. They make the world simpler, easier to parse and understand, but the problem is that all of the stereotypical associations with a label are rarely true for every application of it.

Take gender for instance. It is absolutely correct to call me a woman, but what baggage does that term bring? What extra information does it give you when I accept that label? If you had to guess the length of my hair, it would likely be longer than if you were to guess the same for a man. If you were to first meet me, what do you think you would assume my profession to be? My hobbies? My favorite movies? Labels help us guess these things, and you might be right on several of them, but not on all of them. These guesses also help us ask right questions so we can learn more about people and move beyond the labels. If all you needed to know was my gender to know everything about me, it would be a tragically simple world.

I want to talk about the label applied to people of my generation: millennial. There are some ways in which I am absolutely a millennial, and other ways in which I wish I could distance myself from the term as much as possible.

In particular, I identify strongly with the tech-savvy elements of the label. My childhood was also associated with world events and media particular to my generation, both of which I feel neutral about. What I wish to avoid is the label of being selfish and indulgent. While everyone has their moments, this is not something I want to accept for myself. This is to say, I may be more self-centered than those older than me, but I don't want to be and I'm anxious to work on it. Also, maturity just comes with age. It's hard to know what the final millennial legacy will be while we are still so young.

To work on changing the associations with this label, two things need to happen. First and foremost, we just need to buck up and start thinking about others. We need to ask: how can I be a better child, romantic partner, or employee? How can I be a more polite stranger in stores, on the street, in my car, and online? How can I contribute to the world? And when we ask this final question, the emphasis should be on how the world can be improved, not on our role in improving it. These are good ideas for anyone to think about, and many millennials are already asking these things, but it seems like the cultural expectations for us are lower than for previous generations, which brings me to my second point.

Older generations need to expect more from us. Don't coddle me: I want to be told when I'm not up to snuff. And while you don't need to be mean, I need you to be honest. My feelings will inevitably be hurt, just because change is inherently painful, but it is worth the effort on both our parts. I need to be told when to put away my electronics, when I need to work harder, and when I'm being rude. I need to be told not because I'm sluffing the responsibility off on you, but because sometimes I just need to know my behavior is wrong in order to change it.

Also: keep your praise mild. I'd rather feel like there's room for improvement than like I'm the best thing ever. The humility that comes from feeling like you're never good enough is far better than the arrogance that comes from feeling like everything you do is golden. Err on the side of being hard on me: excellence comes from being pushed.

To tie the two points together: we (millennials...and everyone, really) also need to learn how to accept criticism. This means we need to value results more than how we feel about our work to produce them. This and basically all issues of selfishness come down to priorities. We just need to move ourselves lower down in the list.

It doesn't matter if you're a millennial or not, these ideas apply to everyone, including myself. Everyone, no matter how selfless they are, should consider how to improve. We can improve how we give and receive advice. We can improve how we treat others. We can improve our priorities. And maybe a few rare people should decide that they need to prioritize themselves more, but chances are that those people aren't reading this (spending their time, instead, on others). My only hope is that our generation will have its fair share of those individuals. There is still time to write our legacy. Let's make it a generous one.

No explanation needed

noreply@blogger.com (ajbc) — Mon, 23 Mar 2015 21:22:00 +0000

Just read this amazing article that talks about socialized male speech dominance, which relates to who interrupts whom and how women are often just blatantly ignored.

A woman, speaking clearly and out loud, can say something that no one appears to hear, only to have a man repeat it minutes, maybe seconds later, to accolades and group discussion.

Yup. I've experienced this exact dynamic, though thankfully not with great frequency. An example along these lines, from the article:

Solnit's tipping point experience really did take the cake. She was talking to a man at a cocktail party when he asked her what she did. She replied that she wrote books and she described her most recent one, River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West. The man interrupted her soon after she said the word Muybridge and asked, "And have you heard about the very important Muybridge book that came out this year?" He then waxed on, based on his reading of a review of the book, not even the book itself, until finally, a friend said, "That's her book." He ignored that friend (also a woman) and she had to say it more than three times before "he went ashen" and walked away. If you are not a woman, ask any woman you know what this is like, because it is not fun and happens to all of us.

Another recent related example: about two or three weeks ago, I was sitting on the couches in my church building working on my laptop since NWC had to be there early for a meeting. The wifi was down, so I opened a new tab in my browser and it gave me the typical can't-find-the-network page. A male missionary caught a glance of my screen and waltzed over, asking if I was having computer problems. I told him that the wifi was just having issues and that I was fine. He proceed to tell me that he didn't have that much experience with Macs (ignoring my statement that I didn't need help), so I said I'm a computer scientist; I think I can handle it. After all that, he still acts like he hasn't heard a word I said and says something along the lines of sorry I couldn't help you. How about sorry I assumed you needed help with a computer because you're a woman instead? Because I'm pretty sure he never would have done the same thing to a man my age.

The author suggests that girls learn to say the following phrases more regularly: "Stop interrupting me," "I just said that," and "No explanation needed." Yet none of these apply to my recent experience, so maybe we should add: "Thank you, but I don't need your help."

women in STEM: where to intervene

noreply@blogger.com (ajbc) — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 23:22:00 +0000

I am at workshop this week, and had an interesting sideline conversation today. We both agreed that there was culture-induce inequality of the genders in STEM fields, but the fellow I was talking with disagreed with with me on how to fix things.

I was saying if a department had zero female faculty, then they should make an effort to encourage women to apply. I was not saying that they should be given less stringent requirements or that a lesser qualified female candidate should be preferred over a more qualified male, but that they should simply make an effort to seek out qualified candidates.

He was arguing that we should address the cultural influence not at the faculty-hiring level, but at the elementary school level. While I think that there is much that can be done in elementary school, this would never be enough. A girl could be taught to love math in the third grade, but by the time she made it through the gauntlet of media aimed at middle schoolers, there is very little chance that the elementary school efforts could outweigh other influences.

If we're going to make an effort to level the playing field for men and women in STEM, it needs to happen at every level. We cannot focus only on faculty or other employment nor can we only dedicate our efforts to primary or secondary education. The efforts go hand in hand: without role models, girls may think that certain jobs are unappealing. Without efforts in schooling, there will not be a population of women with the interests and tools to pursue STEM fields.

But these aren't the only areas that influence girls' choices to pursue math-y fields or not. TV shows, movies, toys, magazines, advertisements, parenting choices, religious communities, political parties, news, and books all shape the way we think about ourselves, how we contextualize our existence in the world.

Any time a mother says to a daughter: I'm not good at math, ask your dad, the daughter's expectations are adjusted; it's now okay not to be good at math. Worse yet, she's taught that it's okay to deprecate yourself, which lowers self-esteem and propagates negative cultural influences. Now, it's totally legitimate for many women not to enjoy math or not be skilled at it, but for the sake of your daughter, your own skill doesn't need to enter into it. Instead, a mother could say: Oh! This is important, but it's your dad's responsibility to help with math homework.

Since the influences are so broad and diverse, what can we possibly do? When do we intervene and how much? In most cases, I don't think we need a broad campaign; we just do what we can where we can. If we're on a hiring committee, we seek out qualified candidates. If we're an elementary school teacher, we make sure to present the material without gender (or other) biases, and teach all students that they can excel. If we're a manager, we assign tasks simply based on the ability to perform them. This applies to all areas of bias, be they gender, ethnic, orientation, religious, or something else.

The idea here is that popular culture and media pushes individuals in a certain direction: women need to conform to certain standards of beauty, families need to be constructed a certain way, boys should be good at math and sports. When we see something that feels wrong, we just need to push back in whatever ways we can and hope that our efforts offset the influences we deem to be negative.

The frustrating thing about the conversation today was what felt like a willful misunderstanding. He asked things like, So do you think that a certain percentage of the faculty in a department should be female? No; it's silly to set numbers in advance. If things are grossly unbalanced (like the specific case I was actually talking about with zero female faculty in a reasonably large department), then the department should make an effort to hire women. He then objected that you shouldn't fight an inequality with the inequality of hiring under-qualified women. What bothers me about this argument is that it assumes there aren't qualified women; there are, you just have to look a little harder for them, which is what I was proposing. He then shifted the focus to contrasting elementary school initiatives vs. faculty hiring efforts and eventually even went so far as to compare recruiting females to recruiting people with blue eyes in an effort to question what constitutes diversity.

I think it's common for men to feel threatened by the idea that women should be more actively recruited. It's natural: it implies that they're less desirable, which isn't the case. The reason I bring this up isn't to shame a particular person (I intentionally included no names), but to highlight an area that can be improved. I don't think everyone should agree with me, and I do think that he's right in some ways: women are just people and should be treated as such. The problem is, that until they're actually treated as people in all facets, we can't pretend that everything will just be okay if teach elementary kids to like math and science. There are so many factors at play that we need to make an effort to change culture; it doesn't happen naturally.

And in the effort to change to that culture, I think we need to be a little more careful about they way we converse about these issues. I know I get defensive and other people do too; I think this is the first thing that can change, because as soon as it does, we can stop talking past each other and actually get some stuff done.

LDS Public Affairs

noreply@blogger.com (ajbc) — Wed, 18 Feb 2015 15:43:00 +0000

This past Sunday, I received and accepted a new calling: Secretary to the (horrible acronym warning) NYMMPAC, which stands for New York Metro Multistake Public Affairs Council. It covers 3 Coordinating Councils, or 13 Stakes and 131 units.

Generally speaking, the idea of church public affairs makes me a little queasy. In an ideal world, the good works of the church should speak for themselves and we should have no need to influence public opinion of us. That said, I think the public affairs groups aren't there solely to bring about good press—the director emphasized to me that "public affairs" is really an unfortunate name, since there's much more to it than that. But, prior to this, my perception of Public Affairs was the folks who force members to wear yellow Helping Hands vests and do photographed service activities. Or, more recently, PA was represented by the token woman that introduced the Apostles for the press release on religious freedom.

So why did I accept the calling? Part of it was certainly ego. But another big part of why I accepted is that I was recommended for the position because of my strong opinions. This means that they knew what they were getting, and I had license to be myself. I also warned them that I have a blog.

I have a friend at church who is on the NYMMPAC, and she and I have had regular hallway discussions on church issues (in lieu of attending Sunday School). She acknowledges that some aspects of Public Affairs and popular LDS culture need to be improved, and has been working to make things better. The idealistic optimist in me says: now I can be a part of that effort!

While I do need to keep some things confidential, I hope to keep a record of some of my public affairs experiences, to improve transparency, define the role of public affairs a little more concretely, and to prevent me from drinking too much cultural kool-aid.

Update: Since writing this post, lots of people have told me about great PA experiences, like:

Partnering with Feed Ohio
LGBT outreach
interfaith events, including a ongoing blood-drive that alternates between churches
partnering with other local nonprofits through JustServe

Folks have also pointed out that PA is one of the few areas in the church hierarchy where women have impactful roles. Now I'm feeling pumped.

ice skating as a waltz

noreply@blogger.com (ajbc) — Sun, 08 Feb 2015 13:52:00 +0000

Yesterday, NWC and I went ice skating on the three frozen bodies of water in our area—a tour of the ponds and lake. The muscles in my feet usually get tired after about 40 minutes, so the was a nice way to take advantage of the outdoor ice skating opportunity without wearing myself out. As soon as we got tired, we took a break by switching to the next one.

I'm still very much a novice when it comes to ice skating. This season I've made it my goal to practice two things: stopping and skating continuously (instead of two pushes and parallel gliding; repeat). My biggest problem with smooth skating was speed; I could skate continuously by constantly pushing off one foot then the other, but then I end up going far too fast and losing control.

Yesterday I finally made a break through on skating continuously: I turned it into a waltz. I was watching a slow experienced skater, and started to count how often she pushed off, and it was every third beat. Once I found the rhythm and turned it more into a dance, it was like flipping a switch. Now to figure out how to stop properly...

Allison's Law: "The mess has to go somewhere"

noreply@blogger.com (ajbc) — Thu, 05 Feb 2015 03:49:00 +0000

When I was a growing up, we had a standard of cleanliness in our house called "daddy-clean." My brother and I were asked regularly to clean are rooms, like most American children, but when we were done, mom would always ask: Is it daddy-clean? This usually resulted in a second round of cleaning to make sure everything was out of sight.

There was a flaw to this paradigm, however, which was that daddy-clean only applied to things that were visible. Thus, I learned the art of shoving everything under my bed, which had a convenient bedskirt to hide everything. Toys, clothes, paper; everything went underneath. When under-the-bed got full, the closet was my second choice. Eventually my parents found out about this, due to an abundance of random objects poking out, but they allowed me my secret messes so long as they didn't get in the way of finding important things, which they occasionally did.

Nowadays my messes look a little different. In addition to paper, I have more abstract things like source code. And my experience growing up has taught me: the mess has to go somewhere. Most of the time, this is just a trade off between different aspects of cleanness of an end product and time, but it applies in so many cases.

Consider the process of creating a user interface. The mess can go into the source code; everything hacked together in an ugly mess underneath. The mess could also go into the UI itself: bad design with beautifully easy implementation. Or, the mess could be absorbed with lots of time to have pretty code and sleek presentation.

Or consider a different piece of software, like an operating system. The mess could go into the kernel, into the user experience, or passed on to developers for that platform. Or, again, the mess can be absorbed by lots of time and effort.

In my experience, the mess of the very pretty Mac OS is passed on to developers. D3, with its steep learning curve and beautiful graphics, also passes the mess to programmers. Easy-to-use and powerful libraries like ggplot2 for R probably put the mess in some combination of the under-the-hood code and time.

I've also been thinking about this in terms of (machine learning) model development. Usually elegant models require an intense amount of time to polish into their perfected forms.

It's not always the right choice to absorb mess with time; sometimes a project isn't worth doing exceptionally cleanly. I think it is always worth it, however, to consider where your mess will be going in order to make a measured choice.

on lady tech events

noreply@blogger.com (ajbc) — Fri, 30 Jan 2015 13:33:00 +0000

I recently had a colleague ask me about women in tech events, and I wanted to adapt my response into a blog post.

Women in tech events and long-term mentoring can be very fulfilling, especially when the audience is narrow enough. That said, I'm always hesitant about female tech mentoring because it seems like there is so very much of it, both soliciting mentors and mentees, so it's easy to commit to more than you actually want to do.

It's important that every individual takes a step back asks themselves: How much time do I want to dedicate to networking and mentorship? What kinds of interactions are most valuable to me? (What have I enjoyed about other events I attended?) Plan the big picture first, and then use that as a roadmap to make the smaller choices.

In the end, these are personal choices about you and your career. For me, going to WiML every year is enough. But other people might want more support or networking. Still others might not care at all about things like this—again, this is totally personal. It also varies depending on where you are in your career, because our needs and preferences evolve with time.

As a one-off, these kind of things won't make or break you, but it's the aggregate of multiple events over your career. If you're not certain about a particular event, it might be worth going, just to see how fulfilling these kinds of events are to you, so you can make informed choices going forward.

evening art project

noreply@blogger.com (ajbc) — Mon, 12 Jan 2015 00:51:00 +0000

I've been trying to do more artistic things lately—it's not really a new year's resolution, but it stated during the holidays. After a few frustrating half-finished things, I finally completed a piece this evening. NWC wanted me to name him, and after he refused both Seahorse and Seahorsie, I went with Herbert.

Hebert.

How to contact an academic

noreply@blogger.com (ajbc) — Thu, 08 Jan 2015 23:17:00 +0000

Ever since I started graduate school, I've gotten the occasional academic spam from applying students. These folks are obviously trying to be clever by automating their emails, but usually people see through it. I also regularly get emails from people who want to work for my advisor, or from friends and strangers who want advice on applying to grad school. It feels as though I've repeating myself recently, so I'm collecting all of my advice about contacting professors (or other academics) into a blog post.

1. Keep it brief

Nobody likes a long rambling email, except maybe your mom. At the most, attach or link a CV/resume. A general template is to introduce yourself, express why you're interested in their work, and then tell them what you want. Each of these can easily be one sentence, maybe two. If you want to put lots of effort into this email because it's really important to you, don't just make it longer. Instead, take the time to craft your words so they read quickly and easily.

2. Have a purpose / Make it easy for them to respond

Think about why you're writing to this person. Is it because you want to be noticed in graduate applications? If that's it, just skip the email because it probably won't do anything. You should only email folks when you have a purpose. Examples of good purposes: you want to be a research assistant, want to join their reading group, would like to sit in on a group meeting, or would like to schedule a meeting with them (e.g., to get their advice on a project). If you make it clear what you want, and show that it isn't that much work for them (15m of their time or a two-line email response), then they're much more likely to respond positively.

Now, contrary to what I just said, you can still write to a professor even if you just want to be noticed for graduate school applications. You just need an additional reason, like one of the examples I mentioned above. You should simply say that you're applying, would love to join their research group, and then give them that extra something else that allows them to respond easily, like asking if you can stop in on their group meeting or if they could put you in touch with one of their current students. Simply saying "I'm applying to grad school at your university" is usually a waste of everyone's time, yours included.

If you don't actually need them to respond, you can just say so, but sometimes it's implicit. "I just wanted to thank you for your great work on ABC; I've used it for XYZ and thought you might be interested in seeing the results at <link>." Regardless of whether or not you want a response, make it clear why you're writing to them so that they know what to with the email; this is just general email etiquette.

3. Do your homework

Read their papers. Download and run their code. This takes a bit of work, but you should only be contacting a handful of people anyway—probably under a dozen if you're applying to graduate school, or maybe three if you're looking for a research position at your current institution. If reading their papers is intensely painful for you, then maybe you shouldn't be writing to them.

You also want to avoid looking silly. You shouldn't be asking them questions that they've answered recently on their blog, or asking for their latest reading group paper that's posted on an easy-to-find publicly available schedule.

The last reason you want to do your homework is that you don't want to look like a bot. Consider the difference between "I like your research in machine learning" and "I like your research on visualizing topic models". The first could be sent to thousands of people, but the second could only be sent to a handful. If the content of your email is sufficiently personal, it's obvious that you're a human being that might be worth responding to.

Summary

Keep your messages short, sincere, and specific. These seem like good guides for general correspondence as well.

Christmas at home

noreply@blogger.com (ajbc) — Sat, 27 Dec 2014 14:32:00 +0000

This year we celebrated Christmas without much fanfare. We didn't travel, we didn't have a tree, and we didn't even bake cookies. I did make two nice dinners for Christmas eve and Christmas day, but they were still low-maintenance as far as holiday dinners go. I missed seeing family, of course, but it was a very relaxing way to spend the holiday.

We did go see the reenactment of Washington's crossing of the Delaware, which was cute, though the actors might shudder to have that word applied to them. When the first boat crossed, it looked like they were struggling for a bit against the current, but they made it. One of the highlights was an actor not wearing any pants, which was hilarious.

We bullied this guy into taking a picture with us.
Can you see the fear in his eyes?

The struggle.

Mr. Nopants has disembarked.

The Saturday before Christmas, we went to the mall briefly. It was a very bad idea; never go to the mall between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Never. It was very crowded, bustling with people walking everywhere. In the midst of this, I heard a violin. I thought I was going a little mad as I stopped in place and turned to NWC and started muttering about how it sounded like there was a live violinist in the mall. As we kept walking, it got louder and I kept alternating between jabbering about it and enjoying the calming peace it brought amidst the swarms of people. Eventually, we made it to some kind of indoor central plaza, and there he was, playing along with a subtle recording. It was very sentimental to listen, as my father plays his violin much more during the holidays. I got a little teary and just stood there for a minute, like calm in the eye of a storm. Eventually we moved on to decide that we didn't want to deal with the lines, but we got to pass him again on the way out. I was glad to have experienced his music, and oddly enough, the contrasting unpleasantness of the mall probably made it all the more memorable.

WiML 2014 workshop

noreply@blogger.com (ajbc) — Tue, 09 Dec 2014 22:35:00 +0000

Yesterday was the culmination of many months of planning for the annual Women in Machine Learning workshop. I think it will easily be my favorite part of being up in Montreal for the duration of NIPS 2014.

We had an amazing program; our invited speakers were Carla Brodley, Tina Eliassi-Rad, Diane Hu, and Claudia Perlich with Finale Doshi-Velez giving our opening remarks. Our student oral presentations were thought provoking, and the breadth of our poster session was immense. Corporate sponsors sent great representatives, and the round table mentoring session enabled some amazing discussions. I feel like I can through positive adjectives at basically any aspect of the event, from our volunteers to the food.

I loved working with my fellow organizers Marzyeh Ghassemi, Sarah Brown, and Jessica Thompson. It was an amazing experience and I'm very glad to have had this opportunity.

Thanks to @kmkinnaird for her photography!

the danger of open mindedness

noreply@blogger.com (ajbc) — Sun, 30 Nov 2014 00:17:00 +0000

Being open minded is generally a good thing. It is, in essence, being willing to accept new ideas. Having an open mind allows us to learn about the world, to enjoy new experiences, and to connect with people outside our usual sphere. All of these improve our lives or the world as a whole.

It can, however, be a cop-out. Sometimes people fail to stand up for themselves and their beliefs in the name of open mindedness. If we believe in morality, or in some kind of goodness (divine or otherwise), then we believe that there are lines to be drawn.

The extreme example that we often use in discussing morality is murder. Just to push these extremes: if a group of people is killing others without justification beyond enjoyment, and someone has the ability to stop them without great cost, would it be okay for that person to shrug it off and say, I'm just trying to have an open mind? I hope not.

So if we accept that open mindedness is dangerous in the extreme, what about the more nuanced occurrences in our daily lives? If you suspect your friend is cheating on an exam, is accepting that behavior okay? It seems like the right first step would be to confront your friend, find out the truth, and if thy are cheating then tell them that their behavior is unacceptable—taking action in this way is the exact opposite of open-mindedness.

In the religious world, this is often called righteousness, or adherence to a moral code. If morality is important, then so is standing up for morality when others violate it. This gets a little tricky, however, as certain aspects of morality are highly personal.

I believe that we should each have our own moral code—rules that govern our personal behavior—and that we should righteously adhere to it. This doesn't mean that we need to proselytize our morality, but it does mean that when friends ask for advice, that we should actually give it to them according to our own morals, instead of saying what we think they want to hear.

It also means that we should kindly stand up against behavior that makes us feel uncomfortable. In doing so, we have the opportunity to learn—if our morality can be improved, then this gives the other people involved a chance to respond. In fact, open mindedness is essential to this paradigm: as we consult with friends, we improve our morality. The crux of the problem is: when do we know that we are actually improving our morality, as opposed to degrading it?

2014/12/1 update Vaguely related: a NYT opinions piece entitled The Trick to Being More Virtuous.

onion startups

noreply@blogger.com (ajbc) — Sun, 23 Nov 2014 14:44:00 +0000

I've thought and talked a lot about startups—this shouldn't be that surprising giving my field. In doing so, I've crafted a theory for making startups successful, though I have no practical experience in testing it.

We know that every startup has its core: the minimal viable product that can start getting the attention of investors or consumers. But after this core, they need to grow, or add another layer of product that builds on the core. And then they need another layer, and another...like an onion.

The idea is that startups need a road map for progress. The minimum viable product is essential, but they also need to know each stage of production. As in, what comes immediately after the MVP? And what about after that? Do we waste time floundering around looking at our motley of ideas? Does each developer work on a different improvement until one takes?

If your idea doesn't have multiple stages beyond the MVP, it might not have long-term value. On the other hand, the final product should be substantial, but not bloated. Make sure each layer depends on the previous one so that it's not a branching of random ideas. We are not a broccoli.

In the end the goal should be to solve a single problem well, and each layer hones expands and generalizes the solution. I think that people in the startup world already know this—it's the people who are toying with the idea of doing a startup for the first time that need this perspective.