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"Gayle" is Not Hate Speech
I'm banned for hate speech on WyldRyde. Yup. My name, you see,
 has the word "gay" in it, and thus "gayle" is hate speech.This happens fairly often as it turns out. I've hit this issue on AOL, Microsoft's theSpoke.com, planes with games on their lcd screens, etc. I have to wonder though. Suppose my last name were "Straighth", would I be banned as often? Why is "gay" considered hate speech? (PS: I would check if WyldRyde banned "Straighth", but it's banned my computer completely. Anyone want to check any find out?) How Not To Do Customer Support
I recently sent in a support ticket to evite about a pretty huge issue with their site. I can't say what it is - yet - but it's not a little bug. It's a huge, massive, gaping issue.
Anyway, I get the usual "thank you for your email" auto-response. Then, two hours later, I get this: Thank you for your patience. The issues you have experienced have been corrected, and you may now create, edit, and manage your invitation as desired. If you experience any further difficulties, you may alleviate this by deleting the cookies and clearing your browser’s cache, as they may still contain the error page information. We regret any inconvenience this may have caused you. If we can further assist you, please contact us.Uhh, no, it hasn't been fixed. In fact, judging from the non-sensicalness of the response, they didn't even read my email. What this means is:
Funnily enough, this response probably actually works a good percentage of the time out of the pure flakiness of their site. By contrast, I've had pretty good experience with customer support at other companies:
Google App Engine - Caching and Downtimes (Rant)
Google App Engine:
"We will be taking memcache offline tomorrow morning from 9-10am PST (GMT-8) for routine maintenance. Calls to the memcache API will *not* throw exceptions but will instead return false for set() calls and None for get() calls (just like any other cache miss.) Your app should continue serving normally during this period, andGoogle writes this as though it's "no biggie - we're just disablin  g caching for an hour - your app will operate as normal".If you've used App Engine, you know how ridiculous that is. You can't operate an App Engine site without lots and lots of caching. App Engine takes your generous daily quota and divides it up into tiny little minute or second long quotas. Their logic is something like this:
Now, Google could have mitigated this by removing the absurdly small quotas temporarily. CareerCup would have run slowly, but at least it would have run. Instead, though, users get punished for expensive-ish queries, with no chance to avoid it. Not cool. This brings me to my next point: Google, if you're going to take down people's sites, can you pick a better time than 9am - 10am? Try, perhaps, 2am - 3am? I know you don't want to come into work at 2am. I know it's not really Google culture to tell a team that they have to be at work and away from their families 2am. But you have to. You have real users operating real businesses, many of which are a whole lot bigger than CareerCup. We depend on you to keep our websites up. Google: Don't act like taking down memcache doesn't disable our sites. And don't disable our sites at 9am when you could've done this 2am. Talkinator & The Value of Feedback
I've been using Talkinator, an embeddable chat program for websites, for a few months now.
I realize I might be the only post-1995 site to want a chatroom, but it's actually rather useful. For example, when people are discussing, say, Microsoft Interview Questions, they'll jump in the chatroom to discuss problems. This use was expected. The more interesting use-case was simply feedback. People hesitate feedback via email, or even through anonymous forms. They will, however, jump in a chatroom and complain. I've discovered a number of bugs this way. Nifty. A Googly Peek into Racism Racism is rampant. Maybe this election has made people less racist, maybe it hasn't. At the very least, I hope that it has made people realize that, yes, racism is still very much alive. As a quick illustration, check out the top 10 Google search suggestions for Obama: 30% are race-related issues: "birth certificate", "muslim" and "antichrist".The most frustrating part is that people don't even see the racism and sexism. A Google coworker who had a "Hillary Nutcracker" displayed in his office window - he probably didn't think about how that's dripping with sexism. Nor did the Republican friend who asked online for one good thing that "Barack HUSSEIN Obama" has ever done. Nor does the other friend who asserts that Colin Powell only endorsed Barack Obama because he's black. We don't see these things because we see them all too often. We've become immune to it. It's time that we wake up and call these things out for the racist, sexist acts that they are. Top 10 Best Microsoft Interview Questions----- So, without further ado, I present the the Top 10 Best Microsoft Interview Questions: Microsoft Interview Question #10 Given two nodes in a binary tree, find the first common parent node. You are not allowed to store any nodes in a data structure. Microsoft Interview Question #9 Simulate a 7 sided die using a 5 sided die. Microsoft Interview Question #8 How long would it take to sort 1 billion numbers? Microsoft Interview Question #7 Given two sets of objects, S1 and S2, write an algorithm to determine their subset relationship. Eg, which of the following is true: C1 is a subset of C2, C2 is a subset of C1, C1 equals C2, or none of these? Microsoft Interview Question #6 Given a value in a binary search tree, print all the paths (starting from the root or any other node) which sum up to that value. Microsoft Interview Question #5 Imagine there is a square matrix with n x n cells. Each cell is either filled with a black pixel or a white pixel. Design an algorithm to find the maximum subsquare such that all four borders are filled with black pixels. Microsoft Interview Question #4 How would you divide an integer array into 2 sub-arrays such that their averages were equal? Microsoft Interview Question #3 Given two binary trees T1 and T2 which store character data, write an algorithm to decide whether T2 is a subtree of T1. T1 has millions of nodes and T2 has hundreds of nodes, and each may have duplicates. Microsoft Interview Question #2 Implement boggle: Given an NxN matrix, print a list of all words that appear in the matrix. To find a word, you can move left, right, up or down, as long as you do not use the same letter twice. For example, if the matrix were: W A D R You could find the words: WAR, WARD, DRAW and RAW Microsoft Interview Question #1 Design a webcrawler. In Honor of the VP Debates...
Brought to you by Google's 2001 search index, a quick comparison to show just how new to the scene Sarah Palin is:
John McCain: 158,000 hits in 2001 Joe Biden: 3,240 hits in 2001 Barack Obama: 671 hits in 2001 Sarah Palin: 0 hits in 2001. Despite being mayor of a small town, the internet had not even heard of her in 2001. I'm not sure if that says more about Palin or Google... Bye-Bye Evite - Maybe
It's been a good run. We've have laughed, we've cried, we've... ok, mostly just cried. What's up with evite? I swear, the only thing that the evite does is make the servic
 e worse.The last Seattle Anti-Freeze event was the last straw. A few days before the event, messages we tried to send would silently fail. When your best selling days are within a few days, this is a big deal. The tipping point, however, was after the event: we could no longer export our guest list. We depending on exporting in order to drop people as they wish and to add new guests. So, that was it for evite. After playing around with far too many services, I decided to use pingg.com. The designs are clean and simple - a big step up up from evite's cluttered interface. RSVPing is simple, and at no point does pingg try to force guests to register to do basic tasks like inviting their friends. It's missing a few features, like the ability for guests to remove themselves from the invitation (they do, however, support the ability to block someone which is sort of the same thing). I have a few little complaints, here and there, but all around pingg is a much better service than evite. There's just one issue: people don't get it. RSVPs on all sides (yes, no, and maybe) have dropped significantly since leaving evite. I'm not sure if people are mistaking pingg invitations for, say, an invitation to join another annoying web 2.0's service, or if it's just getting lost in their email box. Either way, RSVPing is way down.
I heard so many people state that evite has no switching costs. Not true. The switching costs are huge and possess a scary unknown factor: Will people RSVP or not? Drink for the Cure / Bid for the Cure - Charity Auction
I usually don't cross-post Seattle Anti-Freeze events, but this one's
 for a good cause...Drink for the Cure / Bid for the Cure - Charity Auction Oct 1, 2008 at 8pm (Location TBD - Belltown / Downtown) Every three minutes, a woman in the United States is diagnosed with breast cancer. One out of every eight American women will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in their lives. Seattle Anti-Freeze invites you to make a difference.If you have something you could donate, I'd really appreciate it :-). Click here (or just shoot me an email). Want to come? Join the Seattle Anti-Freeze list. Seattle Geek Girl Dinners
I'm always impressed by the number of tech / networking / startup opportunities in Seattle. Well, impressed / overwhelmed. Here's another one that came my way: Seattle Girl Geek Dinners.
The second dinner is coming up on Thursday, September 11 and will be hosted by Amazon. Our 2nd dinner is right around the corner! Amazon.com is hosting, and will be presenting on some of the key technologies they are developing.Website | Facebook Group Skip School - Get an Ankle Bracelet
Creepy. From the New Y
 ork Times:The authorities will be able to track San Antonio students with a history of skipping school using ankle bracelets with Global Positioning System monitoring. Linda Penn, a justice of the peace, said she expected that some 50 students would wear the devices in a six-month pilot program. The American Civil Liberties Union criticized the plan, but Ms. Penn linked truancy with later criminal activity. “We can teach them now or run the risk of possible incarceration later on life,” she said. “I don’t want to see the latter.”You're going to give kids ankle bracelets? To do what, exactly? It's not like you don't know if they skip school - the morning roll call already does that. It will, however, ensure that they're treated like criminals. Forbes: College Ranking FAIL
It seems everyone wants to get a piece of the college ranking game, and Forbes is latest contender.
Let's look at how the Ivy League - the group of schools America loves to hate - fared in the newest contest:
Yes, that's right - Wabash College (#12) and Centre College (#13) are all better than half of the Ivy League. While I firmly believe that one can get a great education anywhere, something is just not right about these rankings. It becomes quite apparent when you look at Forbes' methodology: (1) Listing of Alumni in the 2008 Who's Who in America (25%) Ironically, Forbes' itself wrote an article ("The Hall of Lame") criticizing that it "appears to contain a lot of relatively unaccomplished people who simply nominated themselves..." Apparently, the majority of those who apply are selected. Anyone want to be in Who's Who? Think of how you'll help your college!(2) Student Evaluations of Professors from RateMyProfessors.com (25%) Students' input about professors to RateMyProfessors is limited to four criteria: Clarity, Easiness, Helpfulness and Hotness. Nowhere in there do the students provide information about how much they learned. And this accounts for a whopping 25% of Forbes' rankings? At least Forbes decided not to include "hotness" as a criteria.(3) Four- Year Graduation Rates (16 2/3%) This criteria appears a tad more fair. But still, what about a school which has a large number of students pursuing double majors, simultaneous masters degrees, etc? Some school encourage these sorts of academic challenges which would drop their four year graduation rate, while other schools effectively prohibit it.(4) Enrollment-adjusted numbers of students and faculty receiving nationally competitive awards (16 2/3%) For once, I have no complaint about this criteria. Ok, ok, maybe just one: is the sample statistically size fair?(5) Average four year accumulated student debt of those borrowing money (16 2/3%) For the 64% of students who do borrow money for school, leave it to them to decide if going into debt is worth it.Forbes should be embarrassed by their list. 50% of the rankings are derived from extremely unreliable sources, and another 16.6% is a financial consideration that is best left up to each individual student. If you took their list seriously, you would be led to believe that a small, liberal college is the only place to get a solid education in this country. What's really shocking about this list is that no one at Forbes took a glance at this list and said, "Hey, guys, did we really mean to put Hampden-Sydney College over 250 spots above NYU?" Shame on Forbes. I'd expect better statistics from such a source. Time Calls Rape Case "Sexy and Surreal"
McKinney, charged with kidnapping and rape over thirty years ago, has recently emerged. Time Magazine tells us that in the winter of 1977, McKinney and a friend kidnapped a Mormon missionary by the name of Anderson, whom McKinney had been stalking since their relationship ended in 1975. Anderson was chained to a bed for three days and raped repeatedly by McKinney.
In an odd - if not shocking - choice of words, Time Magazine describes the details as "sexy and surreal". Instead of calling it rape, Time calls it "forcibly having sex." It's also called a "sex scandal." So how could Time possibly describe an abduction and rape this way? The rapist was a woman and the victim was a man. Rape is not sex and it is never, ever, sexy. A Creationist Explains the Male Sex Drive
A creationist explains why men have higher sex drives than women:
If the (alleged) difference in men's and women's sex drives is just God achieving population control, couldn't an omniscient, omnipotent God achieve this in other ways? Compared with creating the earth and the sun, tweaking fertility rates should be relatively easy. Somehow, I find the evolutionary explanation a lot easier to follow... BRADvite - Another Evite Alternative
Several months ago, I evaluated a number of evite alternatives out there. It's a crowded space, and lots of new sites have popped up since. Here's a new one that contacted me via a blog comment: BRADvite. Without looking at the comment again, I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say his name was Brad.
First Glance  BRADvite.com pops up with a loading screening. Literally - the background says "loading" all over it. It's sort of distracting. And then in the center, there's a picture of a guy talking on his cell phone. Brad, is that you? Why are you hanging out in the middle of the screen?Invitation Themes The various background images load relatively quickly in the background. Options include waterfalls, oceans, leafs, classical music sheet, etc. But my party is a toga party. On a boat. With a DJ. And drinking. As beautiful as a waterfall is, it has absolutely nothing to do with my party, nor does it express the "fun party" vibe. A picture of a keg would be more appropriate. Tucked away in a corner is a little button to change the main image: a rose, secret service cartoon drawing, asian-style flowers, a man fighting off an elephant, aliens, etc. And, of course, a picture of our new friend Brad on a cell phone. Again, none of these match "toga party". Or even, say, a birthday / Christmas / Halloween party. Registration At least registration is fairly painless. It just asks me name and email address. The registration email didn't actually work, but they fixed that for me pretty quickly. Event Details & Sending Invitation  I can't specify the time for the party. 'Nuff said. Email Invitation At least the email invitation is clean, elegant and provides useful information: host name, email address, date, location, and invitation details. To open the invitation, I see three links: View Comments | Click here to RSVP | Click for Map. Yikes. I just want to open it. Shouldn't I be able to view comments and RSVP at the same time? And why not put "Click for map" next to the address, where it's most relevant and out of the way? After the Invitation Is Sent Host options are limited. I can edit the text of the invitation after I've sent the invitation, but not the background or main image. I can't export the guest list. I can't see when people RSVPd. There's no integration with Google Calendar or Outlook. I can't message guests. Summary The limitations of BRADvite are fairly significant, so I won't reiterate them. There is a more interesting point to be made. Brad of BRADvite is clearly focusing on high quality images. Good. Far too many websites underestimate the importance of their user interface. The issue is that while the images are high quality, they don't very well match what the user wants to do. Brad needs to create user scenarios, such as the following:
Issues like this aren't limited to BRADvite, of course. Websites of all kinds need to stop thinking in the abstract "I am a website which provides [invitations, job listing, etc]" and start thinking concretely about exactly what problems they're trying to solve. Cuil - The Next "Google Killer"?
With the recent
 press about Cuil, the latest "Google-Killer Search Engine", it seems that we've forgotten the lessons from the late 90s. Cuil's claim to fame appears to be:
How Do You Know That? Google doesn't release the size of its index. What Does That Mean? How did they count the size of Google's index? If two urls have identical content, are those the same page? What if the content is merely very similar? Suppose the only difference is that Google isn't indexing the duplicate pages (or, say, the spammy pages), does it matter that Cuil's index is bigger? So? Bigger isn't better. I thought we'd learned that back in the late 90s. For most queries, it doesn't matter if the search engine returns 30 results or 1000. You' generally don't go past the 3rd page. What really matters is the ranking of the pages. If the page you wanted is on the 15th page, it might as well not be there at all. How Cuil Actually Stacks Up: Interface:
While Cuil may claim to have a larger search index, the number of "no result" searches certainly suggest lesser web coverage. The flashy interface is mostly just that - flashy. It's pretty, but the three column layout leave your eyes wandering all over the page unsure of which result is meant to be the most relevant. A more cynical person might even suggest that the three column layout helps mask the fact that Cuil may not know an appropriate ranking. If you want to get real traction as yet-another-search-engine, you'd better attack a different market from Google (or Baidu in China, or Yahoo in Japan, etc) or you'd better be substantially better than Google. Just being better isn't good enough, and Cuil has a long way to go even on that end. Joel Spolsky: "Don't Hide or Disable Menu Items" Today Joel Spolsky had an odd recommendation: "don't hide or disable menu items." His reasoning is that user see disabled menu items and are confused as to why they can't click on them. So, rather than disabling the menu item, he suggests the following:Instead, leave the menu item enabled. If there's some reason you can't complete the action, the menu item can display a message telling the user why.Yikes. It's really better to leave all the menu items enabled and pop up annoying error messages (which people probably won't read) about why y  ou can't click it? No, no, no. There's nothing more annoying when you're trying to figure out how to do something than to click on one menu item after another only to be told you can't do that. I'd much rather have my options narrowed down to the ones I can use.My recommendation: If the user can't use a menu item, disable it and, if possible, add hover text explaining why it's disabled. Avoid error messages, as users get angry and confused at them. If being able to use a MenuItemA is dependent on enabling SettingB, keep MenuItemA enabled and tell the user "In order to do A you have to enable B. Would you like to do that now? Yes | No." Interestingly, he doesn't even follow his own advice with his product FogBugz:
Albanian Sworn Virgins Fascinating. An Albanian custom permits women to take an oath of virginity and live their life as men. The gender-swapping custom has its roots in gender inequality: it provided a patriarch for families who were left without one.The sworn virgin was born of social necessity in an agrarian region plagued by war and death. If the family patriarch died with no male heirs, unmarried women in the family could find themselves alone and powerless. By taking an oath of virginity, women could take on the role of men as head of the family, carry a weapon, own property and move freely.When traditional Albanian culture accepts sworn virgins as men - complete with men's responsibilities and duties - it is actually demonstrating a belief that women are just as capable as men. Why, then, do you have such strictly defined gender roles? Is it solely due to religion? A few other thoughts: On Transgender vs. Homosexuality Taking an oath to become a sworn virgin should not, sociologists say, be equated with homosexuality, long taboo in rural Albania.This line sort of caught me off guard. Next time you write about, say, theatre, why don't you just throw in a line like "but enjoying theater should not be equated with homosexuality." Gender identity and sexual orientation are very different things. On Gender Pronouns Normally, one should use "he" to refer to people who were born female but identify as male, yet this article uses "she." Is this ignorance on the part of the reporter to this "rule", an inability to accept a different custom, or do sworn virgins continue to use the female pronouns? Given the thoroughness with which they are treated as men (including use of the word "uncle"), I'm inclined to believe that they use the male pronouns. So why didn't the article? On the Future of Sworn Virgins As women gain more rights, the incentives to become a sworn virgin become less and less. Some of the remaining sworn virgins, however, appear to encourage the same gender roles that pushed them into becoming men: “Today women go out half naked to the disco,” said Ms. Rakipi, who wears a military beret. “I was always treated my whole life as a man, always with respect. I can’t clean, I can’t iron, I can’t cook. That is a woman’s work.” Father-Daughter Purity Balls
Eww. Father-Daughter Purity Ball [tip: get a login / password from bugmenot.com].
Between STDs and pregnancy, it's great if a girl chooses abstinence. However, the Father-Daughter Purity Ball is saying so much more than that. It's specifically fathers and specifically daughters. If purity is so important, where are the sons? Is virginity not important for boys? If it's about encouraging virtue, why aren't the mothers there supporting their daughters? Instead of encouraging girls to respect and value their bodies, this propagates a distorted world view in which boys are the blameless aggressors, girls are the guardians of purity, and their strong, manly fathers must protect from those silly boys. After all, boys are boys - can they really be expected to keep their d*ck in their pants? Better make that the girl's responsibility. “Fathers, our daughters are waiting for us,” Mr. Wilson, 49, told the men. “They are desperately waiting for us in a culture that lures them into the murky waters of exploitation. They need to be rescued by you, their dad.”Indeed, rather than encouraging a girl to choose abstinence, this promotes the idea of a girl being unable to make her own decisions about her body and needing a man to make the decisions for her. Guess who's going to make the decisions when she gets a boyfriend? Furthermore, purity balls like this one can be counterproductive as parents are unlikely to educate their children on safe sex: Recent studies have suggested that close relationships between fathers and daughters can reduce the risk of early sexual activity among girls and teenage pregnancy. But studies have also shown that most teenagers who say they will remain abstinent, like those at the ball, end up having sex before marriage, and they are far less likely to use condoms than their peers.Parents: Encourage your children to wait to have sex. That's great. But encourage all of them equally - boys and girls. And, just in case the kids don't listen (as kids are known to do) teach them about condoms and safe sex. Preparing for the "what if" scenario is just common sense. Argentina Safety Regulations
One week in Buenos Aires really makes you appreciate the things the U.S. gets right - simple things, like safety regulations. The sidewalks are uneven and have gaping holes. Lane dividers in the road are mere suggestions. Steps are barely large enough for your foot and often vary in size. Building doors frequently open inwards. I've only seen one person in a wheelchair in this city, but I can't imagine how he gets around this city.
My apartment building, like many others here, actually requires a key to exit. Yes, that's right - in order to get out of my building and onto the street, I have to unlock the building door with a key. Crazy. And dangerous. Picture what would happen in a fire: the tenants all rush to the door, and the person at the front doesn't have a key. Even if they're lucky and someone passes them a key, the stampede of people rushing the door could make it impossible to open. The U.S. vividly learned its lesson on exit doors in 1911; Argentina has not. This weekend, at a club called Crobar, I noticed another regulation that is apparently missing here in Argentina: railings. The bar probably had about five feet of standing room and then a two foot drop into the dance floor. As you might imagine, with people pushing to get a drink, it's very easy to fall off the ledge. A club in the U.S. would put a railing between the ledge and the dance floor, but why would you do a silly thing like that in the land of no negligence? You know, maybe lawyers do add value to the world? Why I left Google Yes, folks, it's true. April 11th, almost three years after my first day as a Googler (or "Noogler"), was my last day. Did I hate it? Did something go horribly wrong? Did the company completely change? No no, nothing like that.I loved Google. It's a fantastic company, particularly for engineers. You're driving the products, it's growing quickly, and you get to solve challenging problems all the time. I learned a ton and I'm really glad I had that experience. But, with three years at Google and four internships between Microsoft and Apple, the experience I'm missing is a startup. With that said, let me answer some questions: Q: So, now that you're not there, you can tell me what you were working on, right? No, silly, that's not how NDAs work! :-) I'll let you know when it ships though. Q: Well, what are you doing now? At this very moment? Sitting in a hotel room in Buenos Aires. I'll be in Buenos Aires for the next three months, learning Spanish, drinking wine, eating good food, and playing around with some startup ideas. I'll be back in Seattle on August 1 and I'll eventually join a startup. Got suggestions about what to do in Buenos Aires? Let me know! Q: What startup will you be joining? I'm not sure. Since I wanted to travel for a few months, I really had to do that first and then look once I get back to Seattle. But... if you have suggestions, here's what I'm looking for:
April Fools Day
I'm embarrassed to admit that I almost fell for Gmail custom time. I thought "oh, that's sort of sketchy"... and then I quickly remembered it's April Fools day. Nice try, guys :-).
I think this is my favorite testimonial: Note the investment banker part. Tee hee :-) Planned Parenthood of VA Losing State Funding
The Virginia Senate recently voted to cut off state funding for Planned Parenthood because it offers abortions. Ironically, Planned Parenthood probably does more to prevent abortions than almost any other organization in the country. Planned Parenthood offers pregnancy prevention education, contraception, breast exams, STD testing, etc. Why is it that the people who claim to care so much about the death of a fetus aren't doing anything to stop the fundamental cause? To stop abortions, you need to stop unplanned pregnancies. That's what Planned Parenthood is doing.
Here's the thing that gets me: the US claims to have a separation of church and state. However, we still fund faith-based charities and educational institutions. Sure, the government will only fund the non-religious activities, but doesn't that seem like a somewhat silly distinction? If you give a $1000 to a church's homeless program, you free up $1000 of the church's money that they can then use to expand their religious activities. Despite the separation of church and state, we are essentially funding religious institutions on the grounds that one service they provide is worthwhile. Other services (eg, religion) provided by the religious institution are unconstitutional to fund. We still fund the institution. Planned Parenthood of Virginia provides many services with goals that Pro-Lifers would support. They offer contraception to prevent abortion, STD testing to save lives, etc. Yet, because law makers simply don't like one service (which is perfectly legal to fund), they revoke funding for all of these services. Where's the logic? Why does a church get funding because of one service even though it's unconstitutional to fund another, while Planned Parenthood loses funding for all services because law makers morally oppose one (legal and constitutional) service? StickKing to Commitments A long time believer in the self-interested nature of mankind, I appreciate a person, company or organization which is able to align motivations in productive ways. Want to raise money for your team? Give people something for it. Throw a fund raising party so they can meet new people. Put the donating company's logo on your website so that they can increase visibility. Party A needs to assign its goals with Party B.By this logic, self-improvement goals should be easy because there is no other party to cooperate with. There's only your goal to lose weight, your goal to exercise more, your goal to spend more time with your children, etc. The benefits to you in all cases are clear. So why do so many people struggle with keeping such commitments? In many ways, your short-term self (ST) and your long-term self (LT) are different parties. LT would love to look better in a swimsuit for summer by shedding 20 pounds, but ST would really like that slice of cheesecake. The long duration of the goal, the more LT and ST clash. StickK helps to align ST and LT's goals by imposing simple penalties when ST starts to stray. Here's how it works (for, say, weight loss)
Just one gripe: selecting an anti-charity as a recipient feels a little strange - even unethical - to me. Sure, donating to a group that I strongly oppose, such as a Pro-Life organization, might offer additional motivation, but helping a Pro-Life organization is directly hurting a Pro-Choice organization. It doesn't feel right to me to have my failures unnecessarily impact the pro-choice movement or another group that I support. Thoughts? Abstinence-Only Driver's Ed
On Abstinence-Only Driver's Ed (parody):
ABSTINENCE-ONLY DRIVER'S ED.Read the full thing. It's good. :-) Apples vs. Oranges: Sexism vs. Racism Today while browsing on Facebook, I ran across this charming group:Hillary Clinton: Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich It's funny how overt sexism is so much more accepted than over racism. This got me thinking about some stuff... Racism vs. Sexism Much as I enjoy my little urban bubble where I don't hear extreme racist or sexist remarks on a daily basis, a quick perusal of Facebook shows me that that's woefully not the case. Any large group quickly turns into a discussion of why {insert race, gender, sexual orientation} sucks. Oops - did I say discussion? I meant punctuation-less rant, LOLs and all. Racism and sexism permeate our society in advertisements, jokes, and in each and every person's minds. Though they both permeate our society, racism and sexism are different beasts. They have different histories, different present day struggles, and different futures. History Historically, black people have won certain rights before women - namely, the right to vote. Black people won the right to vote in 1870, while women didn't receive this for another fifty years. Additionally, if my college legal professor is to be believed, the Anti-Discrimination Act of 1977 only narrowly added in the gender clause. The ADA was really targeting at eliminating racial discrimination - protection for genders was afterthought. While black people obtained certain rights before women, the struggles were very different. Black people were slaves - (white) women in this time period may have very limited freedom, but there was still pressure to "respect" women. The civil rights movement was marked with more violence than the women's rights movement. Present Day Currently, at least in my urban bubble, sexism is more condoned than racism. Take, for example, that facebook group (which I sadly discovered one of my own family members joining) and let's flip it around to race. Which would be more offensive: Hillary Clinton: Stop Running for President and Make Me a SandwichI'd argue the second one would be more likely to elicit a jaw-dropping response, whereas the first one might get a little chuckle. Racism is a big no-no, but sexism is kind of ok. [Disclaimer: I've never lived in the rural south. Things might be very different in other parts of the country.] Let's look at the stereotypes facing each group: Black People: Lazy, Violent, Unintelligent / uneducatedWhat's interesting is that while black people and women both face some sort of "stupid" stereotype, the tone of it is a little different. According to the stereotype, black people are uneducated whereas women are educated and yet un-opinionated (they don't really "think" about things). Future Races blend, but genders do not (generally speaking). What steretypes would a person who is 1/4 Black and 1/2 Chinese and 1/4 Caucian experience? People are not, generally speaking, part-male and part-female. Gender has a strict binary divide: you're either male or female. There is no such divide for race. Socially, we might eventually treat different races equivalently but we will never treat genders equivalently. The fact is that the vast majority of the world is attracted to either men or women, but not both. You might regard a black, hispanic, asian, etc person as "just anyone", but men will identified as men and women will be identified as women. Gender will always be a thought that is front and center in your mind. The flip side of the social point is that even if you're a man who thinks women are stupid / crazy / some other offensive stereotype, you still probably want them around (unless you're gay, that is - I wouldn't want to be heteronormative ;-)). The extremes of sexism probably won't result in a thought of "I hate this group so much that I don't even want them around." The extremes of racism do. Sexism leads to superiority, violence, etc. Racism leads to all that, and to elimination / exclusion. Hillary Clinton vs. Barack Obama: Who's More Impacted by Prejudice? Suppose Clinton and Obama try to leave the race / gender issues behind by acting more like the typical politician (eg, white male) - how does that impact how people view them? That is, what happens when a person violates the stereotypes of their race or gender? Obama would be a black person acting "white". Some people might resent him for betraying "his people," but the general public probably wouldn't hold it against him too much. Clinton, however, would be a woman acting like a man. Women who act like men are seen as cold bitches. Every candidate has opposition, but people hate Clinton on an emotional level that you don't see with other politicians. Ask someone why they hate George W. Bush, and you'll probably hear something about the war, economy, etc. With Clinton, you'll often get an articulate arguments such as, "I just hate her - she's a nasty person." Damned if you do, damned if you don't. If she acts feminine, she's too weak to be president. If she acts masculine, then she's a bitch. Does that mean that Clinton faces more severe sexism than Obama does racism? No. The problems are just different. Sexism is more condoned in society, but racism can be more severe. Then again, this is all coming from a white girl who lives in a city in the northwest. One should never forget how their race, gender, sexual orientation, etc affects their experience with prejudice. Am I a Feminist? More than one friend has read my blog and asked, "when did you become such a feminist?" The assumption is, of course, that all feminists must be bra-burning and man-hating lesbians. Having never observed me actually burn a bra, universally hate men, or, well, "swing the other way" (much to some people's disappointment), you can see their confusion.Out of the 100 or so RSS feeds I read, Feministing and Feministe are two of the more interesting ones. Feminists are not man-hating - they're pro-equality. They're not anti-sex - they're believe in each person making their own choice. They are women and men. If I had to generalize about the actual beliefs of feminism, I'd say that they don't believe in generalization. They believe in the individual. They believe that pharmacists should not be able to deny contraception to women. They believe that it's wrong that teen girls in the media are either sexualized or picked on for being ugly (think: Chelsea Clinton in the 90s vs. the Olson twins) So there it is: ugly and worthless, or live bait/freak magnet. Those are the choices patriarchy offers to our girls. Picking on young girls for being awkward is cruel; so is sexualizing them. Men should just leave them alone until they’re grown up. But apparently that’s too much to ask.They believe that women should not have to live in fear in Iraq. They support Clinton and Obama's views on reproductive rights - they do not support McCain's. They do not believe that you should support Clinton because she is female - in fact, many even support Obama. They believe that abortion saves lives - literally and figuratively. They believe that teens should have comprehensive sex education. Abstinence-only programs don't work. And Republicans have… outlawing abortion and telling people to keep their legs closed until they’re married. The very things that never work. And they oppose the measures that have been proven to decrease the abortion rate. Because they’re pro-life like that.They believe same-sex marriages should have the same rights as heterosexual marriages. They oppose the harassment of abortion doctors. They’re going after Dr. Tiller, a Kansas abortion provider, for approximately the 340,986th time. Dr. Tiller is a favorite of theirs because he’s one of the last abortion providers in Kansas, and he provides late-term abortions. One of their followers shot him in both arms a few years ago, his clinic has been vandalized on numerous occasions, his workers are regularly harassed, and he’s Target #1 for a “pro-life” movement that murders doctors. Tiller’s home address, family members’ information, and pictures are all posted on “pro-life” websites. For protection, he lives in a gated community, has a high-level security system surrounding his home, and wears a bullet-proof vest to work every day.They know that rape and assault happen to women everyday, and is often covered up. They believe that it must change. Jamie Leigh Jones was raped by her American co-workers in Baghdad. She was then imprisoned in an effort to cover up her assault.They believe that sexism is rampant in this presidential election. Using overtly sexist language, he has referred to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) as a "she devil" and compared her to a "strip-teaser." He has called her "witchy" and likened her voice to "fingernails on a blackboard." He has referred to men who support her as "castratos in the eunuch chorus." He has suggested Clinton is not "a convincing mom" and said "modern women" like Clinton are unacceptable to "Midwest guys." He has called her "Madame Defarge" and "Nurse Ratched."They believe that domestic violence is very real in the US - and it affects both men and women. The CDC said 23.6 percent of women and 11.5 percent of men reported being a victim of what it called "intimate partner violence" at some time in their lives.They believe that calling teens who are having sex "sluts" does not solve the problem. Shame does not effectively discourage sex - it discourages teens from getting help. A state lawmaker used a derogatory term Wednesday to describe unmarried teen parents as sexually promiscuous and complained that society condones premarital sex.They believe that sexism is alive and well in the US - even in children. Men presidents onlyThey believe that "gray rape" is a myth and it condones rape. Rape can be confusing, it doesn't make it "gray." Feminists have long fought to dispel the myth that initially consenting to one form of intimacy does not make it okay for someone to force another kind on you. In this case, the young woman was hooking up with her eventual-attacker when he forced her to perform oral sex on him.They believe there are tough decisions in gender equality. Should you segregate buses by gender in Mexico to make them safe? They believe that women's rights are changing each and every day. Feminists believe in equality for men, women and transgendered individuals. They are pro-choice. They believe that teens should receive comprehensive sex education. They do not believe in shaming women on the grounds of their sexual decisions. They believe that sexual violence is a very real problem in the US and beyond. They believe that sexism - and many forms of prejudice - permeate the world. So am I a feminist? Well, aren't you? DISCLAIMER: No group can speak for the views of all its members. Opinions vary. Not all feminists are pro-choice, etc. Form Happy - Happy Forms!
I've gone a little bit form happy today. Google Docs just announced today the introduction of forms in Google Spreadsheets. Oh, happy day... :-)
.gif) Prior to this, I had a simple little form app that I wrote. It wasn't great, but it kind-of-sort-of did the trick. There were two versions that I used for Seattle Anti-Freeze: 1) Public Access - anyone can add or remove rows. All updates get emailed to me. 2) View-Only Access - only admins can add or remove rows. Anyone can view the data. For the "add yourself to the invite list" form, I used #1. This was mostly ok - I just had to be diligent about monitoring the list. I got a lot of comments about why there isn't more security on my forms, but it really wasn't a problem. Sure, I could lock stuff down with a password - but why? There's a balance between security and the user interface - more security is not always a good thing (although it would have been nice if a certain someone stopped adding Barney Stinson to my lists...). For the guest list, I used #2. It let anyone view it but not edit it. Technically Google Spreadsheets could do this before, it was just a little more work to add rows (since you have to be logged in to gmail). Easy adding and removing, but there was no ability to edit the contents of a row. One day I fully meant to get around to implementing this, but now... meh. Hellooooo forms. Beautiful. Perfect. I've got a little bit form happy today by replacing my old forms with new Google Spreadsheets form. I've got a new invite list form, an idea submission form, and a form to track the guest list for parties. Excellent.  And, you can monitor any changes to the docs via iGoogle. Wheeeee! This makes me a happy person.
Silly Bugs
Obvious bugs in software annoy me. Obvious bugs in software that have been there for a while annoy me even more. Obvious bugs in software that have been therefore for a while that should be trivial to fix make me laugh.
Wed, Dec 26, 20073 hours west to east? Nope. Don't think so. Sun, Sep 23, 2007Sorry. Mon, Sep 3, 2007Ooh... two hours coast-to-coast... I want to be on that plane! And yet... it used to work at some point: Tue, Feb 27, 2007At some point, between Feb 27 and Sept 3, Travelocity forgot what a timezone is. Travelocity still doesn't know. Nice work, guys. Google Seattle/Kirkland Tech Talks
Google Seattle/Kirkland is running its tech talk series with speaking from inside and outside of Google. Here's the lineup:
Register at http://www.google.com/events Contact seattle-events@google.com with questions.
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