Today, the Against Malaria Foundation announced that it's solidified plans to distribute 676,00 insecticide-treated bednets in central Africa! From AMF's blog:

"AMF has agreed to fund 676,000 LLINs for distribution in the province of Kasaï Occidental. The nets will be distributed from July to October 2014 to protect approximately 1.2 million people.

"The distribution is a partnership between AMF which will be funding all nets, the UK's Department of International Development (DFID) which will be funding all non-net costs through the ASSP (Access to Primary Health Care) project and IMA World Health which will be responsible for carrying out the distribution and post-distribution follow-up.

"DRC is one of the two most affected malaria countries in the world. Large scale net distributions therefore have the potential to make a significant improvement to the health of the communities protected."

What does "a significant improvement to the health of the communities protected" mean? And why is Ross so excited?

Okay, storytime. GiveWell is a research group investigating the effectiveness of various charities around the world (using metrics much more insightful than overhead-spending-ratio, which has been called "The worst way to pick a charity" by GiveWell, GuideStar, Charity Navigator, and others...). In short, they try to answer the question "If I donate $X to charity Y, what (good/bad) things will happen in the world?" with holistic, in-depth research resting on solid data. In short, they're pretty awesome.

AMF aims to fight malaria worldwide, with a primary goal of saving as many lives as possible (this is a little simplified, but approximately true) with the money available. The most effective option,

So, I recently found myself typing up a longish email in response to a high school junior trying to figure out this whole college thing. In particular, the full story looks something like:

• I post a Quora answer in response to a question about majoring in mathematics.
• A user comments, asking if I would field some additional questions by email. (I've since deleted the comment, to protect the privacy of the requester.)
• I spend the better part of an hour typing responses about what it's like to be at Harvard, what it's like to joint-concentrate CS/Math, and some advice on applying to colleges.

In the end, it seemed like there are some other people I know who might want to hear such off-the-top-of-my-head insights. But then again, if you're not a high school student, the rest of this post is going to be pretty useless for you; be forewarned.

In any case, I've reproduced (most of) the email exchange below.

Hi Ross,

My questions are as follows:

1. From your profile I learnt that you major in both CS and Math; what is majoring in two subjects like? Barely have no time to do anything related to social life (not to mention you are in Harvard)? I also want to double-major in CS and Math when I study in university.
2. Did you spare any effort to prepare for applying universities before you were admitted by Harvard? In other words, did you put a lot of time in extracurricular activities (and sports)?
3. Scoring high on SAT requires a huge amount of vocabulary, could you tell me how you memorized words?

Best wishes,
AAAA BBBB

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AAAA,

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Regarding my experiences in the

In a word: no. In three words: haha, really no.

I've taken CS50 -- which is the hardest CS course most Harvard students will take -- and CS161 -- which is the hardest CS course at Harvard, full stop. 161 (Operating Systems) more or less ate my life (it didn't help that I was taking five courses that semester), and still I found time for my friends. When I was going into my third 20-hour coding day (you learn, eventually, that all-nighters are just inefficient), I would still take time to eat dinner with my friends -- and they were the ones that helped me get through that hell.

More than a few of my closest friends are people that I've met while working on some CS project (CS@Harvard is almost compulsively partner-oriented), but even so, it's not like I've only got a circle of CS friends; I'm one of two CS concentrators in my eight-person blocking group.

At the end of the day, CS might eat your life, but it won't eat your friends. They'll be there for breakfast after your all-nighter, and they'll be there to drag you to a party the weekend after your project is due. And, if my experience is any guide, you'll find people in

Harry Lewis once said to me "Flip through the course catalog, write down the 32 courses you most want to take, and then figure out which concentration requires the fewest changes to what you've written down. Then pick that one."

As it turns out, I had many CS courses, several math courses, and was planning to write a thesis (most likely on the math-y edge of CS theory). So CS/Math was a perfect fit. (Math/CS is strictly more required courses, and requires approximately the same writing commitments.) But basically, it feels like I've turned in a piece of paper that convinced the admin that the thing that I was going to do anyway, is well-aligned with their expectations for academic rigor. It's no big deal.The real question, I suppose, is then: "What is it like to study Math and CS at Harvard?"

In general, and in a word, exhausting. Your fellow students are excellent, and if you have a day when you feel like you're not, it can get pretty miserable. It gets better when you realize that everyone is best at some subset of fields, and if you're lucky, you'll find the particular subset that you do well at, and

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For some people, the story of Christmas brings light to the darkness of winter. The reminder of a savior, born in the most humble circumstance -- whose sacrifice would, forty years later, save all mankind from our sins -- is an inspiration to generosity and a source of wonder. For me, it hasn't been that for quite some time.

I don't have any particular problem with other people using the Christ-story to build a holiday which is wonderful for them, but it's not the right thing for me. The innocent child, the prince of peace, lying in a manger has never reduced me to tears -- the story feels a bit, to me, like arbitrary words which translate to "Now it is Christmas; be happy!" And yes, Christmas is a happy time. But I'm not sure I feel it as a meaningful time...

The Secular Solstice was different. It was missing the familiarity built on years of repetition, and the community of people coming-together-once-more (though I recognized many more people there than I expected I would, which was wonderful...). If you've been following along at all, you'll realize that these are nontrivial aspects of a holiday. But Ray told a story -- in one of the darker parts of the evening -- of a world where humans were alone on this rock. Where there was no one to make sure that the world treated us fairly, and no guard rails to stop us from accidentally tripping and falling and scraping our leg and contracting gangrene and dying.

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Last weekend, I and a few friends traveled to New York to attend a winter solstice celebration. Ray Arnold, who ran the event, did a brief writeup, but I figure I'd put forward (1) my perspective and (2) my thoughts on the event.

What actually happened? Well, it looked a lot like a church service -- some people told some stories and we sang lots of songs together. But the story that pulled us together wasn't "Once upon a time, a virgin gave birth to the son of God in a manger."; ours went something like this: (I'm paraphrasing from Ray's masterful telling at the event itself; alternatively, you can read some of his own words)

Once upon a time, winter was death. The world got cold and harsh, and if your tribe didn't have gigantic stores of food, you starved and died. And no one knew why it was, and no one could figure out when it would come.

So people, hoping against hope that there was some human-like person in control of the weather who was capable of pity, threw a party in the dead of winter. And, as it happens, when you throw a party in the middle of winter, spring comes back several months later. (As it happens, not throwing a party works just as well, but no one would dare risk that ...)

The problem was, no matter how many parties you threw, you couldn't stop winter from coming in the first place. We tried, and nothing worked. People died.

But -- someone noticed, after

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The other day, a few carolers treated the Eliot dining hall to a rendition of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen":

God rest you merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay, for Jesus Christ our savior was born on Christmas Day, to save us all from Satan's power when we were gone astray. Oh, tidings of comfort and joy...

And more recently, this happened:

> Shepherds, why this jubilee? Why these songs of happy cheer? What great brightness did you see? What glad tiding did you hear? Gloria in excelsis deo! Come to Bethlehem and see him whose birth the angels sing. Come, adore on bended knee Christ the Lord, the new-born king. Gloria in excelsis deo!

And in both cases (the first in person, the second when I saw it on the 'tube), I found myself following along with the lyrics. Because these are songs that I've been hearing my whole life, and at this point, can probably sing from memory. Even though it's been a long time since I believed the Christian myth.

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This year, for the first time I can remember, my family won't be attending Christmas service at the Columbia United Christian Church. And it wasn't until recently that I've begun to appreciate what that annual service has meant to us all of these years, and what my parents saw in that church that I never did, growing up.

The thing about the Christmas