The New York Times published an article, “Long Reviled, Merit Pay Gains Among Teachers” which describes several initiatives to pay teachers based on the improvement of their students.

I find myself disagreeing with those who believe teachers should be paid this way. In thinking about all of the best teachers in my life, those who actually made a difference, whether they were teaching exactly what they were supposed to or not, probably would not have benefitted from having me or many of my peers in a class. What they offered us was definitely not anything measurable by standardized tests. They offered us knowledge and wisdom that was most certainly beyond the scope of any curriculum that any state committee could develop.

I highly disagree with using standardized tests in general. While I have tended to score fairly well on many of them, I realize that so many people who did not are denied opportunities they might have had without this movement toward standardization (a topic of a future rant, perhaps). Let measurement play a role in areas where measurement is legitimate and accurate; don’t force it into areas that it does not apply. Passion and enthusiasm cannot be expressed as a number. Keep standardized tests away from killing off the good teachers. They are the some of the only people that make people like me want to be educated.

I think these state legislatures should instead toy with killing off or heavily reducing tenure for any teacher below higher education. I’ve always found competition is a great motivator for success.

If you, as a parent, choose to not lie to your child about Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, are you limiting that child’s imagination or heightening their sense of reality? Or are you just producing the kid who ruins the fun for all of the believers. Is that to say that there always is an acceptable level of naivety for a person? Only in the developmental stages? Why? Or, what does that mean for those of us who are knowingly veiled by this naivety but strive for truthful knowledge?

I haven’t yet arrived an answer.

I moved into my apartment on Tuesday. Many of you reading this have probably already been here, the rest should come by some time soon. It’s a gorgeous little place, perhaps seemingly better to me because of one fact: it’s mine. For at least a year. No moving out, no RCRs to fill out, no RAs. If the last few days of living in Tribeca have anything to say, the remaining 51 weeks will be a blast.

I went to the Taste of Tribeca festival today, in which 40+ neighborhood restaurants offered small samples of something from their restaurants. I had everything from Long Island duck wrapped around a French prune, to a pulled pork sandwich, to a delicious apple strudel by Blaue Gans (from the same people as one of my favorite cafes, Cafe Sabarsky; in fact, Blaue Gans inhabits the site of Le Zinc, a restaurant that closed a while ago that was by the owners of Chanterelle (winner of the 2007 James Beard Award, also where my parents and I dined this week) and was also rather good) and a good piece of Kobe beef. New this year, as I’m told, was the wine tent which sampled wines from various restaurants and wine stores nearby. I met the sommelier from Blaue Gans, Christopher, who was very nice to me. The problem with the wine tent was that no one really wanted to take your ticket as they wanted you to come back and enjoy the rest of their offerings. Consequently, there were lots of drunk Tribeca-ites (Tribecans? Tribecers? I’ll figure it out…).

Then, to end the afternoon, I went on a walking tour of my new neighborhood with history author Oliver E. Allen who has written several works on the history of Tribeca. It was amazing what I had missed when walking the streets in the last few days. The tour made me look even more forward to reading Andrew Dolkart’s “Texture of Tribeca” that I just bought yesterday for a coffee table that doesn’t yet exist.

It was made even nicer because I met a few neighborhood residents who were just really friendly to me.

I went out in search of food at midnight last night, thinking it would be a struggle to find open stores to purchase from. It turns out there is a whole underground culture around here, akin to the Meatpacking District, where clubs and bars (sometimes literally) emerge from the ground. I hadn’t a clue that there is a nightclub directly across the street from my building, viewable from my own window, until I walked by the queue of people waiting to gain admittance.

It’s almost a tease that I’m going home in a little over an hour. I had too few unimaginable days of enjoying the company of friends (with whom my relationships, by definition, are in slight limbo), then too few days of enjoying relative solitude with my new neighborhood. At least I’ve assured myself that coding, basketball, and golf (not to mention family and home-cooked meals) await me upstate.

My mother, however, contends that the food is better down here.

School is over.

I’ve been having a problem recently: I’ve out grown my music collection. It’s just not hard enough anymore. Just not enough screaming, thrashing, and noise. All the post-hardcore is too friendly. Even most Glassjaw isn’t loud enough anymore. (Their amps probably only go up to 10). I’ve turned to numetal for solace, back to where my penchant for loudness started, but it just feels a little silly. The people on DC just aren’t cool enough to have better music. I have resorted to begging some trusted authoritative music sources for input.

My sleep schedule has been inverted because of a few too many last calls since the end of finals. I decided to watch Grey’s Anatomy this morning around 5:20am. I had breakfast at 3pm today. It’s a good thing my family is coming so I can expect a return to normalcy.

I’m excited to be living alone for a while. Aspects of it are going to be unbearable (like having your main foosball competition live just a few feet away or people with whom to play Uno). But I’m excited for waking up in the morning and knowing that the (non-existent) mess in my apartment is mine and I don’t have to clean up after others. I’m excited for people not stealing my food and not hearing the constant roar of motorcycle videos or the piercing sounds of bad whistling.

I’m not excited to stop being a student, though. There are so many opportunities given to undergraduates, between the free admission deals, the academic competition and research opportunities, and the proximity of people in the same age group coupled with the proximity of some of the great minds of teaching and research… it’s sad that I only realized this recently (which will be a future topic here). As much as I tried not to, I spent much of college just getting by, my head just above the water, when there were so many great challenges presented to me or available to me. It’s an exciting time to be an undergrad, even more so if that undergrad knows how to take advice.

I had a great time during my tenure at Columbia. Even though I missed out on a lot, the opportunities that I did take I capitalized on. That’s probably a large part of the reason why I’m going to work doing exactly what I want to be doing right now. Columbia was good to me. I’d definitely do it again, but I’d definitely do it much differently.

I realized last night that these encounters with my friends may be the last time I’ll ever see them. It’s both sad and sobering, given that it’s the end, but also that all good things end. I don’t think I had the same feeling at the end of high school, and I can’t figure out why. As Somudro remarked last night, it’s not the people you know best that you become sad about, but it’s the people you wanted to know best that creates that sinking feeling.

Anyway, I should do laundry so that I have socks to wear during the last real night of being a college student.

Some pictures of SEAS Senior Dinner.

I’ve added new photos!

• More random pictures of my friends.
• Me and Emmi at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Matsuri Festival. Lots of cherry blossoms and turtles!
• I leased my first apartment!

!!

I kind of want to trade in my 2001 Olds Alero for this:

This is a Reliant Robin, made by a British company which is now defunct, and yes, it only has three wheels. Apparently, there was a version with a Rover (more powerful) engine in it which made installing wheelie bars required. How cool would it be to need wheelie bars on your car?

Admittedly, this decision is mostly because of this:

Where the gents of Top Gear decided to create a reusable space shuttle using a Reliant Robin (because it looked most rocket-like, of course).

Unfortunately, I can’t get one.

Stephen Cox, a Columbia College sophomore, wrote an opinion piece for the Columbia Spectator entitled, “Fines Violate Students’ Rights“.

It seems that students here at Columbia have a penchant for thinking that Columbia University is improperly acting on behalf of th RIAA in forwarding settlement notices to students who have been served with a DMCA copyright infringment takedown notice. While I dislike defending the practices of the RIAA, being of sound mind and in favor of a fair and equal judicial system, I believe that Columbia and its rival educational institutions are neither in violation of the law nor of any educational or moral standard.

Cox’s argument hinges on the 20 U.S.C. § 1232g.b.2.b clause of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) which reads:

No funds shall be made available under any applicable program to any educational agency or institution which has a policy or practice of releasing, or providing access to, any personally identifiable information in education records other than directory information, or as is permitted under paragraph (1) of this subsection, unless—… except as provided in paragraph (1)(J), such information is furnished in compliance with judicial order, or pursuant to any lawfully issued subpoena, upon condition that parents and the students are notified of all such orders or subpoenas in advance of the compliance therewith by the educational institution or agency.

1. No information was actually transferred from Columbia to the RIAA (as far as I know, and I know more than most). Columbia simply forwarded the letter to the students indicated by IP address. Columbia will only hand over personally identifiable information in the event that they receive a proper subpoena under the DMCA.
2. From what I’ve read, even if they disclosed the directory information of the students in question to the RIAA, they would not be in violation of FERPA. An educational record is all information that a school holds about a student except for directory information. (They may be punishable by other legislation, however).

Admittedly, Columbia is doing a favor for the RIAA in forwarding these letters. The sum of money being demanded is large, and as Stephen Cox points out in his article, far larger than the damages actually incurred by the RIAA and its members (which are on the order of tens of cents). As Six pointed out to me, if I were a target of one of these letters, I’d want to receive it only in order to have the most information about the situation available to me.

Cox writes, “The seriousness and scope of [Columbia's] obligations, in turn, are determined entirely by the RIAA, not by a court.” This is incorrect. Even with this new tactic of sending pre-subpoena letters to students, students have the right to pass on the settlement offer and bring it to court. This is, admittedly, financially prohibitive and complicated, but it has been done successfully.

He continues, “Without subpoenas, the RIAA demanded that schools pass “settlement letters” on to individuals identified only by IP address.” Demanded is a very strong word for this, especially when the first line of such a settlement letter is “We have asked your Internet Service Provider to forward this letter…” Both the university and the RIAA understand that there is no legal obligation to pass this on to the allegedly infringing student. Both entities are fully aware that the RIAA could simple serve Columbia with a proper subpoena, issued by a court officer, to obtain contact information and send the letter to the students themselves. RIAA prefers this approach because it means less legal fees for them.

“In short, the RIAA has asked universities to help it blackmail students and their parents (who the RIAA neglects to mention are not generally culpable for the actions of their children) by forwarding letters with questionable legal claims in them and demanding large cash payments,” he writes. There is a popular misconception that these settlement letters constitute blackmail or extortion. I believe this is a result of the large sum demanded. However, it has never been illegal for the tortfeasor and the claimant to exchange written communication to attempt an out-of-court settlement before a formal claim is filed. For example, if you kill my dog, you had better expect a letter from me asking for compensatory damages.

Cox writes, “The RIAA has decided that it has the right-normally reserved to government agencies-to fine students and the right-reserved to no entity-to do so without due process.” Incorrect. The RIAA is not taking away the right to due process. That avenue is still available to each alleged IP address-masked caper. The RIAA is just presenting a way to make the case go away that is in their favor. Further, fining is not just reserved to government agencies. For example, the major sports leagues uses fines as a means of punishment in egregious cases of misconduct. This is contractual; if a player were not to comply, they could be sued for breach of contract. In the RIAA’s case, the student could be sued if they felt the student does not agree or comply with their settlement terms.

The rest of that paragraph is just disgusting and charged. To counter, I charge that Stephen Cox engaged in sensationalism if only because he accuses Columbia of breaking privacy law three times before backing it up after the fold. Statements like, “Students should be furious about this violation of their legal and privacy rights” will only embolden the unknowing reader into taking up Cox’s anti-institution stance. Further, it’s not even clear to me through his article that Cox read FERPA in its entirety.

Several of my peers recently asked how I’ve become knowledgeable about technology. I remember the first time I was asked: I was taken aback and didn’t know how to respond. Even dispensing with modesty, I never thought that I was ahead of any of my peers in this area, given how pervasive technology, and technologists, have become.

I continue to assert strongly that my domain specific knowledge isn’t nearly atypical but in fact is often below par. This is especially true in comparison to the people with whom I surround myself. Though, I have noticed that there are a lot of people here at Columbia who want to know more about technology but don’t really know how to do it. Most people think that an education in computer science will get you there, but learning how to learn aside (which itself is infinitely important), most of the stuff I’ve learned that is practical came from outside of the classroom.

I’ve since been reflecting on what I’ve done to further myself toward becoming a “master of the universe” (a technical term that means to be a domain expert). I’m definitely not there yet and I still have a lot to learn, but the fact is that I am continuing to learn. I force myself to learn. Taking into consideration peers of mine who are even better than I am as well as present and past mentors, here are some suggestions for becoming more aware and knowledgeable about technology. By no means is this authoritative or even deeply experienced advice. I’d be interested to look back at this list in a few years and see what I’d change myself.

• Ask questions. Lots of them. The point here is: Don’t be scared to ask a question. But don’t ask questions just to ask a question, unless everyone else is afraid to ask a question. The good questions will come naturally if you’re genuinely interested in something. The adage that there are no dumb questions is wrong, dumb questions abound and are annoying, but there are certainly no dumb legitimate questions. I personally have rolled my eyes at every question that was posed simply for gaining attention. On the other hand, I’ve actively encouraged questions that are in search of knowledge, even if I already knew the answer.

  Personal anecdote #1. I first interacted with my future uber-boss, Joe, at a panel discussion where I asked him a question. I followed up with him in an email after the talk with a few more questions, asking for references to learn more about his domain of expertise. He saw an opportunity and asked me to lunch to talk about my interests. We seemed to click well and have similar goals, and the rest is history.

  Personal anecdote #2. I was walking around near the South Street Seaport one day when I saw this tractor trailer that had the APC logo on it and a satellite on top. I walked around it and noticed the telecomm hookups it had. This was not your average bigrig. Even knowing what the company does, I didn’t really get why it had a truck parked in the Financial District. I told an executive-looking guy who shortly emerged from the truck who I am and asked what it was. He said, “You’re interested in this,” brought me inside, and introduced me to the chief engineer of this mobile datacenter project (a precursor even to Project Blackbox) whom I chatted with for a quite a while. It was a fun afternoon being able to geek out in a random location.

• Read a lot, including books and periodicals. Reading is the key to gaining knowledge and knowledge is power. It may be hard to take the time out of your day to read, what with being surrounded by more dynamic forms of entertainment, but if you’re serious in learning, you should be a serious reader.

  Read lots of dead-tree (meaning with physical pages) books. The first time though, just skim for overarching ideas and skip the details. Gain understanding on what a Linux bottom-half is, but don’t worry about knowing the source file they should be in. Figure out how a right outer join differs from an inner join, but don’t worry about knowing the implementation-level details of a B*-tree. Once you do this type of skimming, you should be conversational in a technology, you should be able to have a decent conversation with an expert in the field and show him that you know a thing or two. Then, if the book or subject interests you, read for the details. Master the book, read every word, and experiment with what you’ve learned between chapters. Don’t read dozens of chapters at a time or it won’t sink in.

  I often visualize the domains of knowledge I’ve come into contact with; this visualization takes the form of a long one-sided corridor with lots of doors. The topics I know most about are rooms that are brightly illuminated whose doors are removed and the topics that I know only exist are doors with labels. Whenever I start I new project, I think about this. I think about which doors I’ll have to open to explore in order to finish the project.

  Read lots of periodicals. Once you have a foundation in a particular domain or technology, periodicals are the best way of keeping on top of the goings on of that topic. This is how professionals stay professionals. Start with an accessible magazine, like Linux Journal, which doesn’t focus too much on any one thing. Once you get an understanding of the area, you can select something more specific like scientific or technology-specific journals and conferences. Included in periodicals should be electronic sources like Slashdot (for a 10,000ft view; please don’t read the comments and definitely don’t post any), wikis, and blogs.

  Get a good RSS reader. Once you amass all of these sources of information, it’s far too cumbersome to visit each of these websites. Let the RSS reader do the heavy lifting for you by retrieving articles and presenting them in one place. Set it to poll only every few hours, or else you’ll spend all day reading the news.

  Read a few papers. Scientific papers are how information is transferred from the guy who first thought of it to guys who can think about it more. They represent fresh knowledge, available to use to your advantage. Some of the ideas presented in papers are absolutely infeasible, but others are gold. Papers can be boring and hard to read, but give it enough practice and you’ll be read for what matters. Papers are great topics for discussion groups (see below).

  (For the record, I regularly read Usenix’s :login, Linux Journal, ACM Queue, IBM’s Journal of Research and Development, Intel’s Technology Journal. There are lots of blogs I normally read. I also frequent the proceedings of various conferences, like VLDB, SIGIR, and LISA; I really like reading these papers on the subway.)

  So read a lot. But, amidst reading, don’t forget to practice and investigate what you’ve read first hand. Look at code from professionals. Write some code, either toy code or a patch (see next two points). Run some queries. Do something.

• Join projects you’re not quite qualified for. Quickly learn the technologies that you need to in order to contribute. This is a fantastic motivator to discover new technologies and new aspects of technologies you’re already familiar with. You’ll get it wrong sometimes, but with a little exploring, you should be able to find a group that can foster your growth. Be sure to bring the areas of expertise you already do have to the team and use them effectively. Do not constantly join projects where you’re fully qualified to do, just to show off.
• Hack on bugs in a smallish open source project. Look over what open-source software you use and read over the project proposals of the groups participating in Google’s Summer of Code. Look at the bug lists of the projects that interest you. Checkout the anonymous code repository and look over some code. Join the project’s IRC channel and talk to the developers. (Praise them and say you’re interested in helping out). Subscribe to the developers’ mailing lists. Then start writing some code. The ideal project will be one where you’ll submit patches to the experienced developers and give you valuable feedback on how to make your code better. Less-than-ideal projects will be where you’re flamed for being a n00b.
• Get a good mentor. There are a lot of people out there who are friendly and were once a n00b. But now they’re friendly and experienced, which is a powerful combination for anyone starting to get interested in this arena. Ask someone if they’d be okay with looking over your code once in a while or talk about the industry and emerging technologies. Go out to lunch and talk about the journal you read last week. Discuss the patch you submitted on IRC.
• Form/Join a discussion group. I really like this idea of peers teaching a peer group. Each week, say, one member takes a turn presenting a paper or concept from a book (that they’ve already meticulously read) to the rest of the group. Each person presents something that interests them. There’s a lot of opportunity to learn about a diverse number of topics. About a year ago, a student here set up the Mainframe Interest Group, a weekly meeting of geeks to learn about an aged and often overlooked major technology. I didn’t appreciate it as much as I should have and consequently wasn’t as active in it as I should have been. Today, I sit in on the Database Research Group where some really cool, really smart graduate students and professors talk about current research in their field.
• Learn how to speak and write well in order to interact with people. A technologist is not some isolated coder sitting in the basement. A technologist grasps the role of technology and its interaction with its environment. He needs to convince others of its promise. This persuasion requires great communication skills, skills where surprising many people fail, and skills that are not listed on resumes (but should be if only there were a metric for it). Read Dale Carnegie’s books. For real practice, go participate in a discussion, join Toastmaster, or give a presentation to your peers. At university, don’t shy away from humanities classes that are reading- and writing-based. Take some non-required classes in a humanities subject in which you’re interested (mine is art history) and take the assignments seriously. Take some seminars that are discussion-based, participate often, and don’t sit in the back row.
• Meet as many people as possible. The more people you meet the more interesting people you talk to, the more interesting you get. N.B.: Interesting does not necessarily equal famous.
• Finally, Stand out. Disagree sometimes. Do stuff. No one ever got to be important by agreeing with everyone. Don’t be scared of confrontation when it’s called for. Actually go out and be productive.

(Jeff Atwood just published an extremely similar article to this one. He links to another similarly good piece by Rob Walling. If this pertained to you, read those too.)

I’ve posted spring break pictures. Me and my beautiful girlfriend (giraffe?) traveled to Cozumel and stayed at the Park Royal resort.

Some notes:

• I was impressed by the resort. I thought the service was fantastic. There were so many people working at the resort, cleaning, serving, servicing, and generally attending to guests.
• The resort grounds were pristine and just great.
• Our room was one of the better rooms I’ve ever stayed in. The beach was disappointing, being small and rocky, but the rest of the amenities were good.
• The food was acceptable, but Emmi correctly points out that it would get monotonous for any more than the five nights we spent there. The two of the three a-la-carte restaurants (included in the all-inclusive package) we went to were slightly strange, the Italian being the better of the two.
• There was often strong competition for lounge chairs.
• I found it to be the perfect, relaxing, non-binge-drinking vacation.