Volunteer tutoring

As part of my effort to flood myself with stuff to do this quarter, I've joined my fellow grad students in volunteer tutoring of local 8th graders. It's a program called Rocket Science Tutors, founded by a group of aerospace engineers (hence the name). The goal is to educate kids about math and science and the importance thereof in real world applications. More on the motivation of the group can be found on the website.

I went for the first time this week to a local school one afternoon and led kids through an experiment about relative lengths (using the length of shadows to estimate height of object). There were a lot of us, all volunteers, some, like me, are studying and some are working. It was a lot of fun for me and I think it was a lot of fun for a lot of the 8th graders there too. Fun is a huge driving force of learning, and it's perhaps lacking in the classrooms these days (especially in math and science, blech).

Below is a flyer for a upcoming book fair. Shop at ANY Barnes and Nobles during the following dates, , give them the bookfair ID, and a percentage of the purchase will go to supporting this volunteer group (teaching supplies, materials for experiments, etc)! Help inspire kids to learn about science, math and engineering!

Facebook Stalker

Heard this recently on the radio about the use of social networking sites: The number one use for such sites are for men to look at women they don't know; and the number two use is for men to look at women they do know. To this the radio hosts said "men then spend their time fantasizing how good their lives would be if the women they do know looked like the women they don't know."

We all have a little bit of stalker in us. I'll admit that I go through pictures or friends lists of people on my friends list. I know people who are so proficient at this art that they can seek out pictures of hot chicks who's a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend, and then figure out where she's at now and what schools she went to just based on cross checking friends lists. Of course all I have to do is look at the pictures and go "oh she's hot" or "meh" or "is that .. a man!?"

But the biggest stalker of all has go to be the overlord itself - facebook. You know that feature that suggests to you people you may know? Well at first I thought it was alright, you know, it suggests people with whom I have friends in common (like my brother! ha!). Occasionally it has its misses, but that's understandable, because after all, no algorithm is perfect. Then it started suggesting to me a bunch of my ex-coworkers from Taiwan, with whom I had no common friends. That's when I started to grow a little wary, but not overly alarmed; I may have entered workplace before.

Then, recently, I've become a little freaked out. Not only was it spewing out people with whom I can't remember sharing a connection in cyberspace, it's picking out people I barely even remember. Case in point: I saw the name of a guy with whom I went to cram school for 2 months. 2 months is not a significant amount of time in my life, and I certainly don't know him well (might have had his name on my msn once...). Then there is the friend of my ex-supervisor at a Taiwanese university lab, for whom I worked less than a month before I got a job that paid me more than a slave gets. I mean, sure, I had exchanged a couple of emails with that guy, but it's really starting to freak me out how uncanny facebook is for suggesting all these friends. I think when I start seeing people from my other extremely short stints (1 week at a company before I bolted), I'm gonna delete my facebook account. It's probably too late to stop the spread of my personal info, but being someone only slightly paranoid, "out of sight, out of mind" works well enough.

What's the unit of confusion?

Having been educated as a man of science, I have always used the international system of units, or SI units. These are the ones used in science and widely accepted worldwide: length in meters, mass (but we treat it like weight) in kilograms, et cetera. It always seemed weird to me though that as one of the most prominent countries in the world in science, US is one of the very few countries that uses imperial units: length in feet, and weight in lbs.

Since moving to the US, however, intrigue has turned to annoyance. I've had to work with feet and inches, pounds (and why is it lbs? I don't see an l or a b), and Fahrenheit in lab. And while I pride myself on my mental math skills, at least compared to those who are not trained in it, conversion factors like 2.54, 30.48, and (5/9)x +32 or whatever, are not easy to deal with, and slows down my efficiency considerably. Just imagine my embarrassment when I had to ask a guy what the boiling point of water is; it's utter humiliation for a guy like me who's been around science for half my life!

Now it's not like I've not dealt with non-metric units before: steaks are always in ounces (no, not pounds, as much as I eat), NBA players' heights are always in feet and inches, and a football field is 100 yards. I've also had plenty of practice while in school because textbooks are invariably American, so word problems had these units. The problem is I've never had to deal with conversions before as I do now. Checking the weather is a pain because Fahrenheit means nothing to me, and I still tell people that a 30 degree day is very hot whilst my American friends are going "holy crap that's freezing!". I also had trouble telling whether I had a fever even with a thermometer in hand.

Adding to the problem is that in the world of tools, to which I've recently been introduced, uses not only inches, it uses fractions instead of decimals, at least most of the time. So instead of 0.5, it's 1/2; instead of 0.25 it's a 1/4; 5/8 is 0.625 and 13/32 is.... do you see how it can be confusing? Further compounding this issue is that sometimes they'll forgo the whole fraction thing. Great right? WRONG! When some of your specs are in decimals and some of them are in fractions, it makes it that much more troublesome to compare and match things!

The geniuses who came up with the system apparently decided that more confusion is in order and decided to use 12-based systems (from inches to feet) and 16-based systems (from ounces to pounds). Who the hell does that kinda thing? It's just mean! Poor kids in elementary schools had to deal with and look at where American kids are compared to the rest of the world in mathematics? Complexity only serves to confuse, and doesn't make anyone smarter. It's time that this crappy system be dropped so we can all bask in the simplicity of water boiling at 100 degrees Celsius and freezing at 0 degrees, instead of 212 and 32, or whatever the numbers are.

I survived a flu

This is not a good time to catch the flu, what with the H1N1 (aka swine flu) scare. I don't know when but it seems like the flu has become a lethal disease, at least that's what it sounds like from the people around me.

I flew back from Taiwan and shortly after found myself burning up with a fever of about 100 degrees F (that's about 37.8 C for us normal people). It started innocently enough. I was feeling flushed for a couple of days then all of a sudden found myself feverish and bedridden with a splitting headache that would not let up. I usually sleep it off, as I dislike going to the doctors and/or taking medication for something as mild as a headache. However, at M's insistence,  we went to see urgent care on Labor Day. The doc was a lot more concerned about my complaints of neck pain, fearing it may be meningitis, than about the flu itself. I asked the doc when should I start being concerned, and his response was basically "you have to be a lot worse and for a lot more days" to be concerned. The truth is, medical experts probably don't even care to screen you for H1N1 unless you're dying or dead and they need it for cause of death. Treatment at this point is just a shot of that Tamiflu crap which supposedly works or doesn't work with all kinds of flu.

So what is this deal with the flu? I don't think there's as much media attention here now as it was in the past days, but back in Taiwan, the news still rages everyday about this H1N1 that supposedly kills everything in its path. New reports of death were coming out everyday and it seemed like a pandemic was in progress. However, when you take into account of the Taiwanese penchant for paranoia (and the inability to distinguish the terminology for common cold and the flu), and that TV in Taiwan is more about creating (and I mean CREATING) headlines than the spread of information, you'll understand why I felt peeved that so many around me announced me dead with the flu.

Come on, people. Do you even know what is so special about the H1N1? I don't. The WHO reports about a 0.1% death rate worldwide, but that's just for confirmed cases; unreported cases of H1N1 must be through the roof given its similarity to other types of flu which we see every freaking year. Knock on wood, but I like my chances better than a good number of the decrepit out there. The reason authorities are on the look out for the H1N1 is because it apparently spreads faster and kills a bit more (2~3 times) than normal flus, which are ingredients for a high number of deaths should it spread like crazy. But really what does that mean for the individual? Think about it. A disease is scary if it kills 0.1% of the people if it infects a lot of people. But for the individual, all you have to care about is that 0.1%, not to mention that 0.1% is merely an average, and if you're in good shape and health, the probability of you dying from this disease is MUCH lower.

So why can't I just be sick with the flu and be done with it? I came out of my fever after about 5 days, which, granted, is longer than it normally is for me. At this point it doesn't matter any more what kind of flu I caught, but when I told my mom about this she was still scared for my life! "Did you have the H1N1?" I mean, come on, so what if I did? I don't even have my stupid fever anymore. This crap is just blown out of proportion. I'm not saying that H1N1 is so weak you should go around and lick other people's mucous, no; it's always good to keep good sanitary habits. But really, before we start spraying our homes down with bleach every other hour, or scream like a girl and run every time someone sneezes or coughs around you, take some time to understand what you're dealing with and realize that fear does not keep the virus away.

And I am alive and well, stop telling me that I should be dead with the H1N1. Geez.

Summer has begun

The summer has started, and it's been hard to adjust being swamped by.... nothing. That's right, nothing. Sure I still have responsibilities in the lab, but it's definitely not the same as homework and tests. Being in lab is a lot more like work than it is like school, even if it is taking place at school. With school, the stress is continuous; there's homework to work on and tests to study for. With work, I get to, for the most part, forget about it once I get home. Now there are times at work where I don't get to go home (e.g. my 8-9, mostly 8-11, occasionally 8-4am, job, circa 2006), but when I do, I still get to take my mind off of it.

The transition is hard to make, especially because I'm struggling to get some traction at the lab. My mind has lost the ability to hold on to an idea because it is no longer pressed to do so. I'm so unfocused, I can't even concentrate on slacking off - my mind wanders when I'm taking in my daily dosage of SI.com.

And then there's the boredom. Sunday night I was sitting in my room and I was bored out of my mind. Ever since I've come here, I've pretty much had to deal with school, even on the weekends. Occasionally we'd get a break, but then I'd be tired and want to recharge. It's different now because when I have time now, I'm not in that state where I can appreciate having time off; I'd just be bored. I don't know how to deal with that boredom either, because I've not had to deal with it really since I got here.

So I decided to get a bunch of books *gasp!*. I also have to pick up my camera again, and maybe go out more. Bike around, learn to see the beauty around me. Learn to be happy.