(1)

It probably comes as no surprise to anyone that at one stage in my life, my favorite book was Ender's Game. This is, as I understand it, downright conventional for intellectually gifted children of a particular age, if not actually a rite of passage. As Orson Scott Card writes in the foreword to the 1991 edition of Game:

[A] woman who worked as a guidance counselor for gifted children reported that she had only picked up Ender’s Game to read it because her son had kept telling her it was a wonderful book. She read it and loathed it... [T]he criticism that left me most flabbergasted was her assertion that my depiction of gifted children was hopelessly unrealistic. They just don’t talk like that, she said. They don’t think like that.

...

The nasty side of myself wanted to answer that guidance counselor by saying, "The only reason you don’t think gifted children talk this way is because they know better than to talk this way in front of you"... Because the book does ring true with the children who read it. (...)

And just so,

What you did was done in our name, at our request. We cannot bear your physical wounds, or psychological scars, but we can bear the moral responsibility with you. Your transgressions in war, they are our transgressions, too. We confess this together, and seek forgiveness together.

(1)

Let's talk about what happened yesterday in the Senate. No, not that filibuster; the 85-13 vote on the National Defense Authorization Act. The NDAA re-authorizes $602B of military spending for the 2017 fiscal year. But it also includes an amendment (added in committee by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), chair of the Armed Services Committee, and supported by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)) which expands the Selective Service registration requirement to women.

Meanwhile, in the House, something incomprehensible happened:

During the House Armed Services Committee review of this year’s defense-funding bill late last month, California Republican Duncan Hunter introduced an amendment that would, for the first time ever, include women in the draft. It was a curiouser episode than it first appears: Hunter, a vocal opponent of women serving in combat, offered the amendment as a dare, confident that progressives on gender equality in the service were all talk. He voted against his own proposal.

In theory, anyway, this was a clever ploy. A 1981 Supreme Court decision had specifically linked women’s exemption from the draft to their ineligibility for combat, and with that ineligibility gone, Hunter saw the draft issue as a way to cut to the heart of the whole matter of women warriors. He gambled that liberals would balk when faced with the reality that women might have to, as he said, “rip the enemy’s throats

Amongst all of the large transitions happening in my life about now, I found it necessary to move my blog server from "some borrowed machine on the Harvard network" to a real-adult location, like "the cloud". After asking a few friends for recommendations, I decided to rent server time from Digital Ocean, at least as a stopgap measure until the end of the summer, when I'd be able to pick out my own internet plan.

I'm glad to report that I couldn't be happier with DO's service. Spinning up a new virtual server and migrating Faults to it was probably the easiest piece of system administration that I've done. I gave them my credit card number, told them that I wanted a $5/mo Ubuntu box, and within two minutes, I had an IP address and login details in my email inbox. Then it was a simple matter of copying RSA keys, an rcp on ~/web/, a separate rcp to handle /etc/nginx/sites-available/, a few apt-get installs and npm installs, a call to node ~/web/ghost/index.js, and a DNS edit at Namecheap (my domain registrar)...and I was done. No gotcha problems. No Google searches that ended up in random Linux users' forums. The experience felt exactly like DO's billing: Simple cloud computing, built for developers.

10/10; would use again.

(It's worth noting that Ghost

(1)

To my parents, in whose footsteps I couldn't be prouder to follow.

To my grandmother and late grandfather, who have been working for this moment for the past fifty years.

To my grandmother, who sewed my dance costumes.

To Lucian, the first friend I met here, without whom I would not have found the path I did. I'm so glad we're doing this next thing together.

To Christina, without whom I would not have survived with sense of humor intact. Thank you, friend.

To Ava, who was always there to lend an ear and set my heart true. You're still a klutz and a derp.

To Julia, who could be counted on to be in the audience whenever her blockmates were sweating under the lights. I can't say in words how much I appreciated it.

To Miriam, the stalwart rock of our blocking group.

To Grace, who lit up the room. Smartypants.

To Claire, who had the kindest words. I'm glad I got to know you in the end.

To Joy, who kept being there when I turned around.

To Michael, for wonderful conversations.

To Ben, who set me on the path to make the world better.

To Keno, who weathered the absolute worst with me.

To Rob, who I have liked more the more I've gotten to know him, and who has more than repaid any debt between us with fast friendship.

To Olivia, who put up with my shit for so long, as we struggled and grew together as dancers and leaders. Harvard Ballroom is going great places under you.

To Cyndia, who is the best single thing that happened to me

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, 
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won, 
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, 
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; 
                         But O heart! heart! heart! 
                            O the bleeding drops of red, 
                               Where on the deck my Captain lies, 
                                  Fallen cold and dead. 

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; 
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills, 
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding, 
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; 
                         Here Captain! dear father! 
                            This arm beneath your head! 
                               It is some dream that on the deck, 
                                 You’ve fallen cold and dead. 

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, 
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, 
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, 
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; 
                         Exult O shores, and ring O bells! 
                            But I with mournful tread, 
                               Walk the deck my Captain lies, 
                                  Fallen cold and dead.

Some people are ecstatic at the news. Some people are furious. It'll hit the national news cycle in about twelve hours.

Basically, it's another Friday at Harvard.

Every lunchtime conversation is about the same topic, in hushed tones. Friends measure their words, not quite sure whether what they're about to say will cause offense to their closest friends. One can't sit in the dining hall without overhearing tense, but hushed, conversations about it. "How about that President Faust?" is acceptable as a casual greeting between friends.

It's not just another Friday at all.

(1a)

Today President Faust announced by email that she's accepting Dean Khurana's recommendations that:

1. For students matriculating in the fall of 2017 and thereafter: any such students who become members of unrecognized single-gender social organization will not be eligible to hold leadership positions in recognized student organizations or athletic teams. Currently enrolled students and those who are matriculating in the fall of 2016 will be exempt from these new policies.

2. ...any such students who become members of unrecognized single-gender social organizations will not be eligible to receive the Dean's endorsement letters for those fellowships that require such endorsements.

...

These new policies will not prevent undergraduates from choosing their own paths while at Harvard. They are not designed to regulate the internal affairs of the unrecognized social organizations; the organizations retain the authority to set their membership criteria, even as the College will continue to urge them to adopt inclusive and non-discriminatory policies. Likewise, students will be able to continue to join these organizations and remain in good academic standing with the College. The recommendations are instead focused exclusively on decisions belonging to the College about

We've had, what, two posts in the past six weeks? Sorry, guys, I had a senior thesis (pdf) to write. And we're only kind-of back, since I'm luxuriating a bit in the calm after the storm.

But an article I read in the Crimson on Monday got me mad enough to jolt me out of my stupor (this is usually how I get un-slumped from blog hiatus), and I've got an op-ed in today's paper:

Harvard’s a funny place. In the span of a single day, I can attend a lecture about securing the University’s computer systems from foreign hackers by Jim Waldo, Harvard’s former Chief Technical Officer and, just a few hours later, read an article in The Crimson about the Undergraduate Council’s uninformed request that Harvard postpone its plans to upgrade the same outdated password system that makes it difficult to defend the school’s computers. (...)

It begins, as do some of the best op-eds about computer security, with a quote from Chesterton that I can't remember if I first heard from Leah Libresco or Scott Alexander:

G. K. Chesterton, in his 1929 book The Thing, wrote of reforming institutions: “[Imagine] a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, ‘I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.’ To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: ‘If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the