Sowing C++ Seeds, Growing a Java Garden

Brogramming comes about not because it's actively promoted, but because our school isn't doing the careful gardening and cultivation required to produce good fruit, dispel weeds, and grow respectful, humanistic, open-minded citizens.

Racial discrimination, misogyny, and other forms of intolerance that number among the tech industry's rather more problematic traits arise when you aren't paying attention to social and human factors, and are only looking at so-called "outputs." (The distortion is especially acute when these outputs are being valued by Wall Street and its standards, and not even by our Valley's own standards for creative output).

It's not that the university administration is malicious; it's just that it doesn't care enough, whether through obliviousness, neglect, or low priority.

Developing a healthy culture of technology innovation doesn't just mean producing more patents, more apps, more investment. It means developing a culture that recognizes both the role technology plays in society and the responsibilities we have to that society; and in turn, ensuring that technology is shaped by meaningful social norms and in accordance with our deeply-held ideals.

Prof. Mehran Sahami talks about "good coding practices" in CS106A as a crucial first step in an engineer's education. Beyond that, we have to develop "good cultural practices" too. As the producer of so many engineering and tech minds, Stanford has a responsibility to "get the culture right" and inculcate appropriate ways of treating other human beings into all its students, CS students included. There should be a Stanford CS ethos—not just how to code, but how to interact respectfully; how to coexist; how to support others; how to empathize.

Beyond issues of etiquette and human decency, it would be amazing if more Stanford CS graduates were also motivated to work on social issues—education, environmental challenges, development aid, justice. (This is a separate, but linked issue, so more on this at another time).

What if Stanford CS folks were committed to human rights, cared about privacy, and felt inequality and institutional racism were problems that should be tackled and rooted out anywhere and everywhere? That these issues affect them and solving them matters? What if "community" and "organizing" and "solidarity" were ideas that meant something, so we weren't just in it for ourselves, but because we cared about a larger cause? Maybe we should take a page out of UC Berkeley's book here on social justice and strive to develop an equally vibrant culture of caring.

That should be Stanford's mission: to humanize its citizens. Otherwise it might as well be a coding trade school.

Since Tiananmen

It has been 25 years since students stood on the Square. Joined by citizens from all walks of life, they sought greater freedom and justice, a more humane country, a brighter future.

They came for spring.

It has been 25 years since troops and tanks were sent to crush the protests, arrest demonstrators, and strangle the movement for democracy.

The goddess came tumbling down.

It has been 25 years, and no public accounting has happened in China. Historical memory continues to be suppressed.

But one day, truth will win out.

It has been 25 years, but we will not forget what happened in Tiananmen Square: the searing reports and brave stories that ignited the hearts of so many and created some of the most indelible images of the 20th century.

We still stand inspired.

Today, we mourn and shed tears at the enormity of it all: the innocent lives lost, the possibility of change so stirring and vibrant in the air of May, that dissolved on that June day.

Heartache.

It has been 25 years, but we remember. The world remembers.

One day, China will remember.

When that day comes, we will celebrate the idealism that brought the students to the Square, the moral conviction that made them stay. We will honor the profound courage, the tireless commitment, the utter perseverance by all those who have worked for freedom since the dark shadows descended. We will marvel at the human spirit, at how democratic dreams stay alive, from year to year, person to person, generation to generation.

We take to paper, penning columns, reclaiming hope. We build memorials, we sing songs. We author ballads, we scribble notes.

It has been 25 years, but the flames still flicker and refuse to die.

We light our candles. We hold the torch aloft.

Removing varnish, applying lacquer

In the popular imagination, Stanford luminesces with ideals and innovation; but if you take a closer look, the eye-numbing, headache-inducing glare of doltish reality periodically wipes out my (admittedly naive) sense of idealism.

A highly-regarded professor, someone influential in the budding field of Asian American studies, and remarkably active in engaging students as both a teacher and mentor since 2007, was denied tenure by the University. Beyond excellent scholarship, which we all recognize as a baseline for academia (i.e. life at a first-rate research institution), the high caliber of his teaching and the profound difference he has made in the lives of many students ought to matter. By all accounts, this is what Professor Sohn contributes to the Stanford community, and it is what Stanford is rejecting.

My friend Thanh wrote a plaintive and extremely incisive appeal:

Hi everyone,

Please consider signing the petition below. The petition asks that Stanford’s Provost reconsider Professor Stephen Hong Sohn’s recent tenure denial. Professor Sohn is considered one of the leading scholars of Asian American literature today. The petition text gives more detail.

However, what I take issue with is the tenure process itself, especially the rubric with which Professor Sohn was evaluated. Stanford’s Department of English had already approved Professor Sohn’s file, which meant that the English faculty had determined his scholarship was rigorous, innovative, and “enough” to consider him a peer among the other literary scholars at Stanford. This is not an easy task to pull off.

When placed up for evaluation by the School of Humanities and Natural Sciences, he was evaluated by an external committee and internal committee, which “ranks” Professor Sohn among other scholars “in his field” to determine if he really IS the top in his field. If Professor Sohn was ranked as an Asian American literary scholar—perhaps this petition would not exist. I would like to think that he would have passed evaluation at this level. If he did not—well, I suppose if the society of Asian American literary scholars out there did not consider his scholarship “good enough,” that’s an actual debate to be had.

However, Professor Sohn was ranked as an “Americanist” scholar. Think Melville, Hemingway, Whitman, Steinbeck, as opposed to Chang, Chow, Mukherjee, Tagore, Lim, Lin, Nguyen, Le, Shin, or Park. Of course, since Professor Sohn’s work also looks at queer theory, feminist theory, critical race studies, kinship, transnationalism, and the cyberpunk genre, his “ranking” was poor among other scholars who are “Americanist.” Does the School of H&NS expect one of our few Asian American professors at Stanford to “play the game” and write thousands of pages about dead white men, whose literary value does not need any more boosting? Or does the University, one that considers itself cutting edge, concerned with constantly pushing disciplinary boundaries, and destabilizing established fields, want to invest in someone who is, oh, I don’t know—doing exactly that?

This rubric demonstrates how Stanford does not really value ethnic studies and minority literature as legitimate forms of scholarship. Even though the university has a Faculty Diversity Initiative, toots its horns for having a diverse student body, and boasts itself on increasing the numbers of faculty who are women and under-represented minorities (URM), Stanford (at its highest levels) really is only invested in these endeavors so long as it suits its public persona. The University will increase the percentage of women and URM faculty, but it will not give them an opportunity for promotion, perceive their inquiries as legitimate, and subsequently, keep them. I don’t know how else to say this, but frankly, this is some dumb shit.

Please consider signing the petition below, whether you are a Stanford student or not, whether you attend school in California or not, whether you are an Ethnic Studies major or not—you really do not need an “official” affiliation to care about these kinds of issues. These issues have real effects on students you will never meet, but whose wellbeing and quality of experience should matter to you anyways. It effects entire disciplines, entire universities, and, what is most important to me at the moment: Professor Sohn, one of my favorite people on earth.

In the silliest of appeals, this petition has a real effect on me. I have taken 4 classes with him—one as a baby frosh, and three as a graduate student. When he writes a letter for me—I get accepted to things. He is an amazing honors thesis advisor, who helped me pull through my “I am too dumb to do this, I shouldn’t consider myself remotely smart enough to research and write 60 pages.” He is also a cherished advisor for my Master’s degree.

Anyways, the link is below.

http://www.change.org/petitions/stanford-provost-john-w-etchemendy-reconsider-professor-stephen-sohn-s-case-for-tenure

I say this with some hesitation, but this institutional decision makes it feel like we are in a “white boys club.” These types of situations are always complex, but the more I stare at it, the more it feels like a delegitimation of Asian American scholarship, which ultimately translates into denigration of an ethnic community. I doubt the review committee intended to be racially motivated, but this outcome broadcasts the message that “people like you don’t fit in here, because you aren’t getting with our program.” And “our program” is what mainstream white people know, are familiar with, and want. That seems more like a Hollywood mentality.

What strikes me as particularly ironic is that if this were the School of Engineering and some prof was doing weird, cool things analogous to “queer theory, feminist theory, critical race studies, kinship, transnationalism, and the cyberpunk genre” they would be like HELL YEAH, WE WANT YOU! Going off the beaten path and connecting different dots are hallmarks of the “cutting edge” in technical disciplines. In contrast, Humanities & Sciences, which ought to be the home for social justice, the school most sensitive to struggles for identity, appears to be a place where “traditional” understandings (perhaps we might call them mainstream and privileged understandings?) are superior, while approaches that are “queer/oddball/offbeat” constitute a liability.

Why is it that achievement in Asian American literature scholarship is easier to brush off? This brings to mind the recent ruckus about the Colbert Show and its use of ethnic slurs for satire. Regardless of your views on the incident, the #cancelcolbert conflict highlights a problematic feature of life for Asians in America: we get steamrolled because we are the “quiet” minority, because we don’t protest. Jay Caspian King writes about this larger issue in The New Yorker, forcing some hard questions beyond just the value of Twitter activism and the overreach of political correctness. So with regard to Professor Sohn, I wonder if this decision came down because in the eyes of these folks on the review committee, Asian American literature isn’t “part of America” yet — and therefore his work in this area does not merit him entry into this “prestigious” Stanford circle.

I don’t claim special insight on this issue. Nor do I contend that the problem is more or less prevalent at Stanford than at other institutions, though the fact that it happened is already an undeniable disappointment. I’m simply expressing a few emotions evoked by this frustrating turn of events.

Perhaps it resonates more strongly because of my life as an Asian American — a person of Asian descent in America. When the redacted review file comes out in June, we may also find other considerations at play. But for right now, the whole scenario feels, in some fashion, like the continued marginalization of an already quiet and pliant minority.

What is America? Are we, Asians and Asian Americans, part of the national fabric? One would hope an institution like Stanford University — founded by a fortune that was built on the backs of Asian immigrant labor — would be the most progressive leader on that question. At least we now have a chance to discuss it.

Childhood, On the Inside

A moving multimedia piece was featured in The New York Times yesterday, entitled "Chinese, On the Inside." It features Catie and Kimberly, 11 and 9, who were adopted from China by a couple in Maine, and the family's attempt to keep them connected to their Chinese cultural background.

Wow, I don't even know what to think. This video stirs up plenty of intriguing emotions: heartache for sure -- 心酸 -- but also great affection. There are inklings of commonality, as well as immense difference.

My first reaction (and it is only a first stirring): something has been taken from them. Can they be whole without that part of their identity? Who are the individuals who purport to be their parents? What would it be like for a child to live in such a household, and was it a responsible choice to make?

I want them to have what we had growing up -- a household with immigrant parents, filled with a mixture of English and a tongue from a homeland, a place at once distant and near; the clash and negotiation of cultures; parental expectations rubbing roughly against American life; meals and habits and norms both tacit and spoken, governing cleaning and prayer and responsibility; no need to explain, it just is.

Maybe they had a wholly American experience with non-immigrant parents; maybe they're better for it in some ways, raised by someone other than Amy Chua's tiger mother (but that's an issue for another day. I'm grateful I didn't have a tiger mother either).

They certainly wouldn't have either experience -- the Asian American or the Protestant American one -- if they had stayed in China, consigned to an orphanage upbringing. That alternative future would have been far bleaker. So I cannot begrudge their parents, and wish to commend them: there are in this world, generous hearts such as theirs.

Moreover, these parents from Maine are trying; they are seeking some way for that Chinese cultural spark to stay alive, stay valid, stay meaningful. How much harder it must be when it is not second nature, but second hand, when trying to convey an upbringing that is not your own!

This video struck a note piercingly clear: we are Asian Americans. Those of us who live here, who grew up here -- we aren't Chinese. Chinese people don't talk like Kimberly. There's one scene in particular, where she talks about how she feels about Chinese identity and relating to her classmates, that really struck me. The reason I identify with that child so strongly is because she sounds like my childhood friends, she sounds like me. She is utterly, desperately familiar, and even if she grew up in a Caucasian household, the way she speaks, her cadence and tone and voice is is so achingly familiar, and all I can think is love, and love, and love.

At the same time, I know there must be distance, a separateness born of experience so markedly different. The author of the article brings this into focus: she is from LA and grew up in a community like ours, so for her to see these lives unfolding is the same confusion that pushes us to introspection.

This dear child! I wonder if she will laugh when she watches Wong Fu videos. Do Phil, Wes and Ted speak to her the way they speak to us? I wonder if she saw Totoro at age 4 and was in love with Miyazaki for the rest of her life. I wonder if she knows to address visitors as 阿姨, to call her maternal grandparents 公公 and 婆婆 when they visit. Does she take her shoes off at the door? Does she know that wide rubber bands open jars, that napkins and ketchup packets can be saved?

I wonder if she feels any obligation to a distant entity in Asia, not only as a locale to visit one day, but because what happens to that country matters -- that nagging concern of cultural loyalty borne into national feeling. I wonder if she knows that "Chinese New Year" is in January or February every year, but doesn't want to feel obligated to translate or elucidate or explain "all those customs" just because she is the token Asian kid, would you goddamn stop orientalizing us, she just wants to go home and be Asian and not have to parade it out in front of the class as a paean to diversity. Can she walk down a Cupertino or Arcadia or Flushing street and feel at ease, even if she's never been before, because this is a world already known? I wonder when she first tried pearl milk tea, or 叉燒包, or siu mai, and even in its wondrous newness, this dish was never "exotic", it was always "home."

I can hardly imagine the non-immigrant Asian American experience, but I think that scenario is what our kids will have to live. The process of adaptation and assimilation ... these words chill me, because I wonder if it means forgetting and overlooking and dispensing with the past; if the line stops here, and cultural memory fades into the background. Once a vibrant part of life, can it persist if it isn't lived?

I want her to have what we have, for now at least -- to be part of a community of understanding, a cultural nod, a knowing wink, a billowing sense of "Yes, I know what you mean!" As should be for any human being, she is free to choose to live the life she wishes, but that means having a choice in the first place. Different paths, possibilities, options, opportunities, must exist for choice to exist.

From there, she can navigate streams of identity -- to recognize what animates her, to choose to hold on to what matters, what resonates and gives meaning at the core of things; and conversely, what to discard and release into a world of temporal stardust. It's finding "her", and realizing that sense of "her" is a note in a chord in the chorus of a song that stretches across time, across generations, across oceans.

Some day, she may have these questions, even if she doesn't grow up with the same concepts or stories. For now, there's life, and that's a start. There is time, still, to link the past to the present -- to be connected, to feel rooted, to have a sense of belonging -- peering back, leaning in, hurtling forward, enroute to the future.

She shouldn't have to be Chinese; but she should have the chance to be Chinese American.



*The English word "Chinese" doesn't have enough nuance to capture these distinctions. We are 華人 (our parents 華僑, our generation 華裔); but we aren't 中國人. Yet 華 hua identity matters -- the customs, ideas, ways of thinking and behaving, norms and expectations, because it's what connects us all across the world, whether we are people of Chinese descent in Malaysia or Canada or Hong Kong or Taiwan or Singapore. 華 has diverse expressions in all these places, but at its core, when exploring issues of culture and identity, can still unite us.

International Urbanization Seminar (China)

This is the poster for a course I am co-teaching with Deland Chan in the spring (URBANST145 / EARTHSYS138). Find out more at www.internationalurbanization.org

Turn of the Century

There are moments when I wonder if I'd be better off living a hundred years ago. Time to think, to write, to read. Where crafting a thoughtful letter is considered a good day's work. Where you can take the evening to play a string sextet, and people don't think you're being "inefficient." Where cooking is allowed, and conversation welcome. I am a digital native, but sometimes in the bioware mishmash of blood and transistors, bile and circuits, I think I have an analog soul.

Lend me your (pasta) ears!

I went to a cooking class last night where they taught us how to make pasta by hand. What fun! We rolled out the dough into thin sheets, cut it into a variety of shapes and sizes, and even filled and sealed tortelloni (large-sized are tortelloni, the small-sized ones are tortellini).

One of the recipes was for something called orecchiette, an ear-shaped pasta. You roll the dough (2 parts semolina, 2 parts all-purpose flour, water, lots of kneading to get elasticity) into smallish cylindrical rolls, and then slice it into "coins." You then use your finger to press each coin into an ear shape. This can be done against the counter top, but if you do it on something textured (we used a gnocchi board) it adds cool-looking grooves on the pasta surface. After cooking, it comes out looking like this:

Cooked orecchiette (top) and finished with kale (bottom). I have to say that our pasta was particularly toothsome, with the right amount of springiness in each bite.

It reminded me of the 貓耳朵 or "cat ear" pasta (noodles?) that my friend from Shandong says his family makes, and how I'd imagine them to be. I have a distinct memory of the pinching motion he made with his thumb and forefinger (followed by a toss into boiling water) when he described the dish to me. I searched online for images of 貓耳朵, gathering some photos and recipes and found them to be just like orecchiette!

"How to Make Cat Ear Pasta" A basic recipe for 貓耳朵

"Cat Ear Pasta with Pork and Mushrooms" The procedure and the product in this blog entry on how to make "肉絲炒貓耳朵" by bonnie8nz was virtually the same as our orecchiette!

Rights to these three images belong to bonnie8nz

With egg and tomato http://bit.ly/19oVkEZ

With curry sauce http://www.meishij.net/zuofa/galimaoerduo.html
They use a sushi roller for texture!

Thus, one might be able to jokingly say that when we make the Chinese variant of this pasta, instead of calling it "orecchiette" we might actually call it "ore-kitty."

Which nation?

The Tufts alumni magazine has an intriguing feature that splits North America up into various "nations" that have distinct cultural beliefs. The author observes these to be the "dominant culture", reminding us that "it isn’t that residents of one or another nation all think the same, but rather that they are all embedded within a cultural framework of deep-seated preferences and attitudes—each of which a person may like or hate, but has to deal with nonetheless.

This conception of nations (plural) isn't that far-fetched. "Albion's Seed" makes a great anthropological study of four different colonial cultures (Puritans, Cavaliers, Quakers, Scotch-Irish) that give rise to enduring regional difference even in modern-day America.

Funny enough, I'm currently reading "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman, wherein the main characters contend that while there may be geographical proximity (on the continental scale), the variegated parts of the U.S. are actually different countries:

"San Francisco isn’t in the same country as Lakeside anymore than New Orleans is in the same country as New York, or Miami is in the same country as Minneapolis." 

"Is that so?" said Shadow, mildly. 

"Indeed it is. They may share certain cultural signifiers—money, a federal government, entertainment—it’s the same land, obviously—but the only things that give it the illusion of being one country are the greenback, The Tonight Show, and McDonald’s."

Ring around the Rosy, Pocketful of ...

Does anyone else notice an uncanny resemblance between the Apple "Spaceship" Headquarters that has been proposed, and the GCHQ's (i.e. the British NSA's) building in the UK?

One happens to be surrounded by trees, whereas the other one is ringed by parking lots. Hopefully Apple's intention is more benign: producing consumer products instead of spying on the public.

[Images from: The San Jose Mercury News, Gensler and The Guardian]

Bonus: The dragon-shaped stadium from Kaohsiung, Taiwan that is completely solar-powerd.

Ceaselessly into the Past

Part of the reason we like books is that they are timeless: temporal transportation at your fingertips. One can always return to a beloved chapter from the past and relive beautiful moments again.

It doesn't matter what the present or the future holds. You can still go back and re-experience the joy in the moment, and it is no less real -- the visceral emotion, the plaintiveness, the sorrow, the bliss. In each case, the sense of possibility exists, and exists again. Every journey, every return, holds the promise of different endings made possible again. Because these works are written, there is a mutability about the story. Even if you've read the ending a thousand times, in the moment it occurs, the tale is yet to be written. The characters may yet gain that ending where happiness awaits. Oh such belief! Belief held so closely that we might call it faith.

In this turning and returning, of pages, of times, of lives, there resides immense hope. Dangerous, narcotic, heart-shattering hope -- but lovely nonetheless.

Dancing Monsters!

Via Facebook Stickers. I'm parking this graphic here to embed it elsewhere.

Once

There was once
Good night, and good luck
I'll find you again, dear morning
Sheer nighttime
Slate gray
A day, a day, a day

Time now only for light & love

The moon is a massive mirror hanging in the sky. I wonder if anyone ever tells the earth to look at its own reflection in that mirror.

If you placed the moon in your pocket, it wouldn't emit any silvery beams because it's not a source of luminescence.

When in darkness, ask for stars. They may be small, but they burn with their own light.

Moonlight is like lace, arcing through darkened tree branches.

Heard this evening: "the moon the day after Mid-Autumn -- the 2nd day -- is actually the roundest and brightest." Just like brunch the next day, lazy day, after a night of revelry and festivities. This moon has no pressing matters to attend to: it can lounge in its chair with a book of short stories and a tray of celestial mimosas. Hours drift past, an open horizon. This moon tilts its head with a contented expression. This moon arches its back. This moon rolls over and yawns. It spreads across the sky.

-- Random #中秋節 thoughts.

Mid-Autumn Again

The world still spins round and round, orbiting that bright star. Happy Mid-Autumn Festival, 中秋節快樂!

The light from the moon bathes fields and terraces,
filters through groves and glades.
It washes onto cobblestones
and wanders country lanes.
Echoes of her shining compass:
bright crests, radiant irrigation.
Watch the transfer of quicksilver
carrying all the hopes in the world.

Future Tense

Bwa ha ha. From Matt Walsh:

I always love the older folks who lecture about how THEIR kids weren’t as “attached to electronics” as kids are nowadays. That’s probably true, but mainly because, well, YOU DIDN’T HAVE ELECTRONICS. You had a toaster and a black and white TV with 2 channels, both of which were pretty easy to regulate. But, sure, congratulations for not letting your kids use things that didn’t exist.

On that note, I have a strict “no time machines or hover-boards” policy in my home. It is stringently enforced. I’m thinking of writing a parenting book: “How to Stop Your Child From Becoming Dependent Upon Technology That Isn’t Invented Yet”

the streetlamps were like a string of silver arrowheads

Red Rose, White Rose, and all the goddamn tragedy of sunken, misfitting lives. Eileen Chang, how can you do this? From wondrous fragments of beauty—absolutely luminous!—to ruined shabbiness flat-lining in the grey corner of a grey city.

Wheels spinning, the gears are grinding down and flaking apart in the hollow spaces. Household domesticity: outward serenity, with the suffocating walls of respectability folding in. The firm press, the resolute pressure of bourgeois life, built brick by brick. To what end?

It's a soundless scream: he's choking on a noose with a silken slipknot. A glint of metal, blade, edge: potential rescue. Imagined? Please; please save him! Such delicate observation.

To no avail, he does not save himself.

The Next Wave

How amazing would it be if for California's next act, we showed the world how to build advanced, high-performing, environmentally-sound infrastructure? It would be wonderful if our state became the showcase for the future of transportation technologies integrated into comfortable cities and living communities.

It's how our state will move beyond "Silicon Valley", Internet bubbles and app-building. We've got the electric vehicles, the self-driving cars, and now the hyperloop ...

http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_23854572/mercury-news-editorial-elon-musks-hyperloop-is-hypercool

Islands

I'm cleaning this computer, which must go back to the university, and found a note from May 30:

The island of lost happiness. What might have been, lost moments that ended too soon. There, these dreams are still alive, and you can live in joy with your loved one, forever.

It is the place where memories gather: lives cut short, alternate histories not written, roads not taken, paths untrodden, doors unopened, hearts unbroken. This is where those dreams reside.

With Fondness

I was searching through old notes, and I saw that I jotted this in July 2012, a full five months after Opening's last performance. It seems like it takes me a while to get over the things I'm emotionally committed to:

"I used to think that Viennese Ball was right around the corner -- that we would reunite and things would be wonderful again. Now, I recognize that we will never recapture those emotions, never gather that group together, never be in association with each other again. And so anticipation fades, and Viennese Opening Committee moves into the past, into the realm of memory and of pleasant recall, nothing more than shades and sepia photographs and laughter long forgotten. Oh, there is still a pleasant glow about the idea of it, but it is decidedly in the past tense. It is inexorably, unchangeably over, and it won't return. I know that now, so I can say goodbye."

Named at Birth

The next pair of pandas shipped out from China should be called 「自由」 and 「平等」。If they have a cub we'll call it 「民主」。

下一對運出的大熊貓應該叫「自由」 與「平等」，如果有新生的幼仔，叫它「民主」。

* 自由 = liberty, freedom;  平等 = equality; 民主 = democracy