Monthly Archives: October 2005

I started a new blog to track the progress of my senior thesis (and possibly to make thesis-related jokes and musings), Link (hosting, etc. is cheap). The design is pretty awful right now, but I think I know how I’m … Continue reading →

When my classmates complain about annoying makework in classes — easy didactic problem sets, attendance at boring lectures on easy material — they’ll often say something like the following: “Grades shouldn’t be based on this garbage, they should only measure … Continue reading →

In particular, I’m interested in Japan, China, and India. Yes, I know Japan, China, and India together cover a huge land area, are home to nearly half the world’s population, and have little in common taken as a whole. Let … Continue reading →

“Marv developed and produced an enormous belch.” From A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley. (Thanks, Min)

After a fair amount of hard work, I was nominated by Amherst to compete nationally for a Watson Fellowship. The Watson pays for about 50 graduates from a selection of American colleges to do a year of travel and study … Continue reading →

Trying to publish to this blog via SFTP (via Blogger) fails with the error 001 blah socketexception Network is unreachable. I’m trying to figure out whose fault it is. This is sort of a test. UPDATE: test indicates collusion between … Continue reading →

It’s possible Amherst broke my blog (again) with another undocumented change.

After a fair amount of hard work, I was nominated by Amherst for the Watson Fellowship, a prize that grants about 50 students from selected American colleges and universities a $25,000 stipend to spend over a year’s (self-devised program of) … Continue reading →

For my Econ seminar, I just read the paper, “Do students go to class? Should they?” by D. Romer, which concludes that absenteeism hurts academic performance and calls for mandatory attendance. My response is appreciative of the science and critical … Continue reading →