Just now, I had a quintessential graduate student moment. On Halloween night, inside the Social Sciences Library, I was practically moved to hug Frank Costigliola's Awkward Dominion: American Political, Economic, and Cultural Relations with Europe, 1919-1933, after I found the last confined copy: just 13 hours before the seminar where it may well save me from the embarassment of having to give a presentation based on hugely inadequate research. I got Offner's Origins of the Second World War as well, so I will have an exciting three hours of trying to race through them before the library closes.
Monday, October 31
Happy Birthday Greg Allen
I felt really strange for most of today, while sitting in the DPIR and working on one or the other paper. I felt significantly lighter than usual, as though I should sort-of bounce along like a moon astronaut. Also, I felt this impulse that seemed like a signal that should normally be attached to some need, as if to say VERY X, where X is an impulse like hunger or tiredness. When I checked, however, there was no X to feel VERY about, just some sense that I was missing something big. Such things can reduce one's ability to concentrate.
Rather later, when walking back from dinner with Emily and her father, it occurred to me that the M.Phil in IR is rather like doing the front crawl. There are two phases: one in which your head is underwater and you are trying to move forward and the other in which you are trying to breathe, so as not to die. Like while swimming, the breathing part is always a matter of necessity and relief. It's cyclical and it doesn't last long. For me, it happens between Tuesday evening and Thursday, more or less.
Having dinner with Emily and her father, by contrast, was rather like getting out of the pool. sitting on the agreeable patio, and reading a good book. That has something to do with the relief of being ripped out of the narrow context of colleges, libraries, and shops where I have spent virtually all of the last month. Even though some of the time there was spent having a look at Emily's paper and some more of it was spent discussing issues relevant to the course, it felt overall like a more thorough kind of non-school than anything else I have done so far. Even going for walks and reading books feels like the breath between two strokes, you see.
Meeting Emily's father was engaging and worthwhile. It amused me to slip a birthday note (Ave Avi A vie) into the mail slot of Avi Shlaim, who lives next door and whose book I read in Emily's company a few days ago. Likewise, sitting beside a fire and eating omelette were both pleasant reminders of the enormity of the non M.Phil, non IR world.
Speaking of that world, I feel compelled to respond to something Emily told me. Apparently, a good share of the M.Phil program seems to be reading this blog. (Something similar is true of the college.) My first response to hearing that is fear and the concern that I've said something stupid. My second response is the general feeling that people really ought to have better things to do with their time, though far be it for me to tell people what to do. In general, then, I suppose I should offer my greeting to the concealed masses. Your presence forces me to do a couple of things. Firstly, it forces me to at least try and be interesting. Even during days when I wake up and feel ghastly, try to read, do some laundry, and go to bed, I need to come up with something that won't have people drooping with boredom and slamming shut their laptops in disgust. Now, I should be clear about one thing. I try to be entertaining for the people back in Vancouver as well. The big difference is that, since they are not here, I could probably entertain them most easily in ways somewhat different from those in which I might entertain those in Oxford. It's the second group - the closer group - that compels me to be reasonably accurate, as well as interesting.
The second, and rather more difficult, thing that I am forced to do is be tactful. As much effort as it can require to be at least a bit interesting, it is much harder to maintain a blog as a relatively sane, civil, rant-free place. When one has the nestling comfort of obscurity all around, these things are not important. When one is standing at the centre of a group of unidentified figures, it comes rather to the forefront. All in all, it will probably be good practice. Please forgive me, in any event, the occasional lapse. Much as I try not to be, I am a fallible creature. Part of the reason for this blog is to help me process my thinking into a more refined form. It is quite possible to believe something for a long time that you instantly see the wrongness of as soon as you are challenged to write it down and explain it. Self-improvement is an aim of the blog, and life in general.
At the moment, however, there is no time for that. I have two papers due on Tuesday that exist, at present, in the state between when the individual components are welded together and laid out according to the design and the part where everything is strapped and attached and the thing is ready to fly on its own.
Many thanks to Emily for a very pleasant evening. Let us hope that the revitalization it has induced will help me to overcome the latest batch of hurdles the program has thrown my way.
PS. One last note to people reading: I would appreciate if you would participate, in some sense. I much prefer a discussion to an extended one-sided rant. I realize that it might be awkward to comment in a space that I basically have exclusive dominion over (though certainly not complete control). Therefore, I suggest that people with nothing in particular to do should consider posting on the IR forum. I really think we might be able to help each other out with things, if not actually get to know one another better.
PPS. To those asking her about it, Emily never promised to get me a job of any kind. She merely indicated that she might be able to set me looking in appropriate directions. It's quite unfair to approach her with requests for similar treatment, just because I was careless enough to post the initial incident here.
Milan out.
Sunday, October 30
For the whole length of my academic life, I have been a shameless procrastinator. Every time I have some new and lengthy project to complete, I manage to forget this and feel increasingly ashamed and alarmed at my inability to make progress on it. At some level, this is probably predicated on the background knowledge that I've put off so many other projects before and made my way along relatively unscathed afterwards. At another, it reflects the curious nature of my ability to do work - especially writing. It's something I am occasionally able to do in great, bounding bursts - completing several pages in ten minutes or so. It's actually partly an effort to level out the rate at which I write that I have been updating this blog. Hopefully, it will beget a habit of greater consistency.
There is a certain irony in how cogent and comprehensible arguments are more easily attacked. When presented with something full of unfamiliar terms and complex arguments, it is difficult to formulate a response. Even in cases where a lot of that complexity masks underlying flaws, there is a great hesitance to accuse someone of nebulous thinking, for fear that their argument has simply been too subtle for you, or grounded in strongly differing assumptions.
Four weeks into my first term, it seems awfully early to be thinking about summer employment. That said, I will be damned if I end up working for £3.50 an hour this summer, with no benefits. Emily has suggested that she could help me get some kind of banking or consulting job in London and that, furthermore, my total lack of knowledge about either is not a serious impediment. While I do have some doubts about whether anyone would give me a real job for the period between June 17th, at the end of Trinity term, and the start of Michaelmas term on October 6th. If such a job can be found, it will be a welcome way to reduce the amount of student debt I will be taking on.
Daily miscellany:- I've been corresponding a bit with Astrid in Quito. It's fascinating to read about what she has been doing down there - volunteering for a maternity clinic - though the stories can be quite startling, as well.
- In the spaces where I previously just stared blankly around my room, between periods of reading or writing, I've started reading Terry Pratchett's Witches Abroad. Some reminder that all books are not about IR is welcome. Also, Meghan has been recommending Pratchett to me for ages. I remember reading Night Watch with Laurie, Tish, and her atop Palatine Hill in Rome.
- Here is an interesting article on seafood menus and fisheries.
- Nick Sayeg has some nice photos from Norway on his blog.
Saturday, October 29
In short, the bloggers' gathering was a success. It was interesting and enjoyable to meet a diverse group of engaging people, none of whom really have an appearance that screams blogger!, whatever sort of appearance that might be.
The Library Court party afterwards, to which I brought two of the people from the bloggers' gathering, succeeded in blocking any attempts to work on all the academic things that need to be done. That said, I was not fighting and kicking to make progress on them. Why, there are hours left yet.
This afternoon included a quasi-valiant effort to move forward on the various projects that must be complete next week:
- Paper for Andrew Hurrell (Tuesday)
- Paper for Dr. Fawcett and Wright (Tuesday)
- Presentation on American isolationism during the interwar years (Tuesday)
- Statistics Assignment (Wednesday)
- Pay fees and battles (Friday)
Tomorrow, all these things will begin to orbit elegantly around the gravitational centre of whatever intellect I still possess: condensing and organizing themselves to the point where they are both internally and externally comprehensible.
Bonsoir.
Friday, October 28
Some perspective
I read something tonight - something Astrid sent me from Ecuador - that makes me feel ashamed about how trivial all the thoughts and concerns represented on this site are. How is it that we can legitimately complain about this or that aspect of life in Oxford when the whole experience of it is incomparably safer and richer than that of a huge tranche of humanity? A vignette of some of the more shocking products of that inequality lends incredible poignancy to the question. A more important question that follows is: what must we do?
To be exposed to the enormity of poverty and injustice is to be charged with an overwhelming ethical sense that something must be done; and yet, the content of that something is unclear. The experience is reminiscent of that of reading an article my aunt wrote: one of an astonished powerlessness. All that I feel as though I can do now is not to forget about it, just because it is usually concealed and peripheral to my thinking. If we are go get anywhere, as a world of people. we need to deal with this.
Perhaps, on the basis of her experiences in South America, Astrid will be able to understand - and help many more of us understand - the complexities and the imperatives involved.
Today was a lovely day and a good one: bright enough to justify the use of sunglasses, with quite a good amount of work completed, to boot. Before my lecture, I finished this week's Economist and completed a solid outline (including introduction) for the paper I am writing for Dr. Hurrell. With luck, by the time Emily and I meet on Sunday evening to edit papers, I will have both of the ones due for Tuesday finished.
After today's advanced study of IR lecture, which was delivered by Dr. Hurrell, I had the chance for a very brief stopover at Wadham before moving onwards to the exam schools and a Changing Character of War Program lecture. It was delivered by General Sir Rupert Smith, on the topic of the utility of force. Most of his points were quite familiar, but the one bit that struck me as quite clever was a rebuttal to something that has become the accepted wisdom with regards to fighting terrorism: namely, that it is an asymmetrical conflict. The idea goes that when states with regular armies try to fight non-state groups with irregular forces, they have a rough time of it. The point General Smith made is that it is a requirement of good generalship to turn any conflict you are involved in into an asymmetrical one, to your advantage. To designate the wars where we are doing badly as 'asymmetric' and leave it at that is a therefore both a misunderstanding and a poor excuse.
His more familiar contentions include how terrorist groups and other non-state military actors have adopted the practice of operating below the threshold at which the forces of states have utility. He also talked a lot about generating and maintaining support from both your domestic constituency and within the areas where you are operating, as well as the new role of the armed forces in creating the conditions under which stability can exist, rather than defeating the enemy in a straightforward and conclusive way.
After the talk, I had dinner with Roham at St. Antony's, watched a few minutes from Pirates of the Caribbean, and had a beer. The film reminded me pleasantly of the first time I saw it, in Montreal with Viktoria P. It's definitely the sort of trend that it would have been nice to extrapolate for the evening, but my two upcoming essays are wailing at me for completion and there is much else to do besides. Tomorrow, I am determined to spend as much time as possible (aside from the quantitative methods lab and bloggers' gathering) in the Social Sciences Library reading for the papers and next week's seminar.
Miscellaneous other:- Thankfully, I've been able to defer my battels and fees, yet again. Anyone considering coming to Oxford should take note of how astonishingly difficult and time consuming it can be to transfer money here.
- If people in Group B, with Dr. Roberts and Ceadel, could take a look at this thread on the forum, that would be excellent.
Thursday, October 27
I am now officially booked to go to Tallinn from the 16th of December until the 22nd. It's an area I'm excited to visit, since I've never been anywhere remotely like it. After my EndNote course today, I went to Blackwell's and looked through the travel books on Estonia for a while. Some of its appeal as a destination comes from how I know so little about it. It should be an adventure. There also seems to be the possibility of going to Finland for a day or so; apparently, Helsinki is a cheap three hour ferry ride away. Sarah and I intend to have a look at that, as well.
The other thing that caught my eye at Blackwell's was a collection of large laminated wall maps of the world, each with metal strips along the top and bottom, such that they can be hung. The strict new prohibition against Blu-Tac in Wadham increases the importance of the latter feature. Given that I've just spent one hundred pounds on flights to and from Tallinn, as well as some travel insurance, now is not the time to buy such a map. At the same time, it's a thing I should definitely get eventually. I remember spending long periods of time perusing the one on the wall behind the fax machines at the law firm whose mail room I used to work in. The more time I spent within three kilometres of Wadham (35 days or so), the more I begin to fantasize about exploring much farther afield.
This evening, Nora and I drank the tea that Meghan sent me. It was a pleasant reminder of good things left behind on the west coast, and I appreciate her sending it. Thinking about Vancouver reminds me of how odd it will be to spend Christmas in Oxford. It will probably be a bit like the days in the December of my first year when Nick, Neal, Jonathan, and I occupied the near-empty dormitory for the winter solstice and "Pagan X-Box Con 2001."
Later in the evening, I had a good wander with Emily: talking about the program, upcoming papers, plans for the break, and such. She says that she can help me get some kind of decent and well-paying job in London for the period between the two years of the M.Phil. It would be incredible to both have my first 'real' job and have the chance to somewhat reduce the amount of debt I will be taking on next year. I'm also excited that she has invited me to have dinner with her and her father at some point. As I may have already mentioned, he is a sculptor who lives in Oxford and who, if I recall correctly, made the heads around the top of the Sheldonian Theatre, as well as the friars at the Blackfriars tube station in London.
The walk, up and down St. Aldate's Road and then to St. Antony's along St. Giles, was a good conclusion to a day that has restored me to some kind of productive emotional equilibrium, after the curious dip of these past two days. Now, I can get on to the serious work of drafting two papers and a presentation, all for next Tuesday.
PS. This Friday, there is to be a gathering of Oxford bloggers, at a yet-to-be-decided location. It will be interesting to meet some contemporaries of that kind. Perhaps it will offer some tips on how to improve the rudimentary formatting of this blog, as compared with the slick complexity of some of the others.
Wednesday, October 26
Today was an odd day, heavily tinged with the uncertainties of yesterday. I attended many hours of class, followed by an IR social, followed by a pilgrimage to The Turf.
All told, it was a much more enjoyable day than yesterday. I wasn't called upon to present in the core seminar, though Bryony did an excellent job with the topic. While tedious, the quantitative methods lecture covered some good material. The subsequent round table on national and regional responses to American hegemony was extremely interesting, and the IR social event afterwards was good fun. In particular, there were good conversations to be had.
[Content Removed: 29 October 2005]
[Photo Replaced: 29 October 2005]
Speaking with Margaret for a few hours later also did much to make the day a good one.
Tuesday, October 25
Happy Birthday Lana Rupp
I had written another omnibus entry for today, all arrayed in neat paragraphs, but after attending the research forum Bilyana invited me to, I think I can do better.
Today, I had my first real pang of intellectual exhaustion. The whole day was like wading through mucky weed-strewn bog: unpleasant, unproductive, and liable to make you question why you are where you are and whether you should set yourself trudging towards the nearest edge of the mire. While I was sitting in the back of the room - peppered with fellows, cheeses, and ports - I decided that if I am going to carry on to a PhD, I absolutely must do something else first. Something in a world far removed from this and hopefully more connected to the world which all this purports to examine.
The irony of the moment is that graduate work is so much more haphazard and general than the last years at UBC were. Here, we have no choice about what we study. Worse, we are thrown at narrow questions without any real context, without the perspective to judge and speak with authority or relevance. We're just picking up books and trying to smash through windows with them and, beyond identifying who can handle it and who cannot, we're not achieving a thing.
I realize that such criticisms themselves lack balance and long-term perspective, but it's often better to express an idea when it is still unsteady and vital: before the addition of stabilizing girders makes it impotent.
Monday, October 24
Today basically involved nothing but reading. I finished The Twenty Years' Crisis and more of this week's Economist. The end of Carr's book is much less convincing than the beginning, particularly due to its conception of international law. It strikes me as one that, in many important respects, has been undermined and transcended in the years between the book's publication and the present. While there may always be causes of egregious breach in international law, it seems to me that the institutional framework for it has developed considerably, as has acceptance of international rules and norms both among general populations and political elites. It may not 'bite' when it comes to the very most contentious issues, but it is more than the mere distillation of power that Carr generally portrays it as being.
Another task accomplished today was the completion of what I hope is a solid draft of the statistics assignment. I feel decidedly shaky with regards to my ability to use STATA and it's never comfortable to be using a dataset that is basically unknown to you in terms of origin and methodology. Still, I think I've done a decent job of answering the questions, given rigid space constraints, and it feels like now is the time to move onto other tasks. Nobody will assert that I am lacking for them.
While there is definitely a lot of work that exists to occupy my time, I nonetheless feel that some kind of voluntary organization would be a good place to invest some energy. It would balance out life a bit, offer me the chance to meet new people who aren't residents of Wadham or students of international relations, and generally deepen my Oxford experience. The Oxford Union is definitely out, at the present time, due to excessive cost. The mountaineering club has been suggested to me, but I have no experience with such things, really. Are there any other groups that people would urge me to consider?
Aside from a brief foray to buy discounted soup at Sainsbury's, I have not left my room today. I shall endeavour to be more interesting tomorrow.
Today's short items:- A more interesting post than mine is here. This one even more so.
- I think I need to vary my diet a little. I haven't eaten anything cooked, apart from microwaved Sainsbury's soup, since the last meal in hall I did not opt out of (October 11th).
- After using the LCD monitors down in the college computer lab to finish the stats assignment, it is a pleasure to come back to a screen with a proper contrast level and the beauty of anti-aliased fonts. Windows users: the way Garamond looks in the rendered banner at the top of this page is how it looks all the time in Mac OS, where it is lovingly smoothed.
Sunday, October 23
After an excellent but late night yesterday, it was difficult to get into a proper reading stride this afternoon. The necessity of getting the reading done for the core seminar on Tuesday, preparing a potential presentation (20% chance of being called upon this time), and working on the statistics assignment means I will be opting out of tonight's IR social event tonight.
I quite like the style of writing in Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis: though written in 1939 it still seems highly cogent and relevant. Carr is definitely on his strongest footing when he outlines the tension between pragmatism and idealism in world politics and the way in which the former is sterile without the latter, and the latter powerless without the former. While interesting, Carr's book is less than entirely useful for the core seminar, as it is much more theoretical than historical. With luck, I shall be able to muster the energy to read the Clavin or Feinstein book tonight, though all the noise from Saturday-night-crazed undergraduates is in league with general tiredness to reduce the likelihood of such outcomes. Even with headphones on and the loudest possible music that does not totally demolish my ability to read, abrasive screaming and laughter penetrates my small and patchy cloud of studiousness.
At some point tomorrow, I am to meet Emily to read. It's certainly a thing that I generally do more efficiently with company, as I am more effectively constrained from moving on to more interesting tasks.
Miscellaneous:- Those who appreciate The Shining should see the odd satirical trailer linked on Alison's blog
- I am now quite seriously in need of a haircut. If someone can suggest a place in Oxford that will restore my hair to something generally akin to its appearance in the blog profile, at a reasonable cost, I would be most appreciative.
- During my first month in England, I spent £168.72 on food: £136.29 at Sainsbury's. That's C$352.98 in total, with C$285 at Sainsbury's. Those figures do not include the cost of dinners in hall, before I began opting out of all of them. That represents 46.5% of my gross spending, compared with 7.6% for just four binders, four pads of paper, and a hole punch at Staples.
Saturday, October 22
This afternoon brought the dream of a British bank account another step closer, though still without any knowledge of when the whole process will be successfully concluded. It also involved grocery shopping, the completion of a preliminary read of this week's Economist, some reading on Dawes and Locarno, and correspondence with Emily and Kate. The former is heading out into the countryside with friends for the start of the weekend; the latter has returned to the city from the woods, and is processing the data on bears collected while there.
Trying to complete our first quantitative methods assignment has been frustrating. I can see that the second and third question, respectively, would be best solved by means of regression and hypothesis testing, but I don't perfectly recall how to do either. STATA is definitely an impediment rather than an aid. For the first assignment, I am fairly sure they just want us to 'eyeball it,' but I would definitely rather do it in a statistically rigorous way.
Last night was great fun. The wine drinking event was actually a competition. In each of seven rounds, we were presented with an expensive wine of a particular variety, for instance Pinotage, and a cheap wine of the same sort. The objective was to use your knowledge of wine (of which I have none) and the descriptions of the wines provided to deduce which was which. Given my total lack of familiarity with many of the genres presented, my ambition was to do better than random chance would have suggested. Much to my surprise, I actually won. This is particularly shocking given that the elimination round at the end was based on one's knowledge of cricket. Asked how many of a particular cricket related statistic a certain cricket player had accumulated in a tournament, I confidently said "twenty-one" without the slightest knowledge of what was actually being asked or what sort of number was likely. In any event, I now have a bottle of white wine from Nuffield's own cellars sitting beside my Glenlivit.
Aside from the competition itself, the atmosphere at Nuffield was great fun. I met Carolyn Haggis - presently a D.Phil student at Nuffield, formerly an M.Phil in IR student at Brasenose. She is living proof that the program can be survived, and in such a way that you would be willing to read for a second degree at Oxford.
The event was not at all stuffy and the commentary from the two hosts (and introducers of wines) was rather amusing. We were even treated to a rendition of the South African national anthem, though Margaret tells me that it was not without inaccuracies. All told, it was a night of excellent company and good fun; hopefully, a suitable prelude to getting a lot of work done today. Many thanks to Margaret for the invitation.
Friday, October 21
Observations
The subject emerged from his room shortly after nine, showered, and left Wadham College through the back gate. He walked along Saville Road to Jowett Walk, turned left onto St. Cross Road, and then turned right onto Manor Road - approaching the Social Sciences Building from the south. After greeting some fellow students, he chose a station near the middle of the information technology room, where he remained for the duration of the two-hour workshop. He was not attentive, spending the time completing the bulk of the first assignment rather than following the printed instructions. He also spent time responding to emails and reading blog entries. When the class ended, he walked northward along St. Cross road, accompanied by two colleagues, and passed through the University Parks before separating from them and walking southward down Parks Road to Wadham College. At no point was contact with the subject lost.
I got a package from Vancouver in the mail today which is very well appreciated. My mother sent me a coffee press and a pound of coffee. I am now decidedly well prepared for coffee accelerated reading and caffeine-bolstered comprehension.
Today's lecture on the advanced study of IR was really excellent. It was a presentation by Dr. Marc Stears about ideological and historical approaches to political theory. It was about two schools of textual interpretation in political theory: the Cambridge School and the Ideological School, based in Oxford. Basically, each tries to address questions about which texts we need to study, how we should go about doing it, and how we should write about texts. Each is based on the perspective that all writing that seeks to forward political ends can be viewed as 'speech acts' and need to be evaluated according to the context in which they were written and the intentions of the author. Decidedly not post-modernist (since it embraces, rather than rejects, authorial intentionality), it nonetheless seems like a useful way to think about texts. Some of my enthusiasm definitely derives from the rhetorical skill of Dr. Stears, who was probably the most effective lecturer we have had in the program so far. If the opportunity arises to see him speak again, I will take it up. Also, I've added Quentin Skinner's Visions of Politics to my discretionary reading list.
I learned today that, in addition to the paper which I need to write for Dr. Hurrell in the next nine days, I am supposed to write a paper for the core seminar instructors, due on the Tuesday of 4th week. Worse, it is means to be written on one of the topics for which I did not prepare a presentation. That means I have to do another whole week's worth of reading. Given that I now have Charles Feinstein's The European Economy Between the Wars, Patricia Clavin's The Great Depression in Europe, 1929-1939, and E.H. Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939 on two day loan, I think I will have plenty of motivation to start drawing down my newfound strategic coffee supply.
Having dinner with Emily tonight was most enjoyable. We ended up having dinner, and later going to the Green College bar, with Roham and some of the other members of the M.Phil program. Roham is an extremely personable young man - good natured and somehow capable of enlivening those around him, while making everyone feel comfortable. Both individually and as a pair, he and Emily make for superb company.
Dinner at St. Antony's is quite a different affair from the process at Wadham. It's cafeteria style, to begin with, and includes much more selection that at Wadham, where a binary meat/vegetable decision is all the choice you get. They also have the benefit of a salad bar, the opportunity to get beverages apart from water with your meal, and a more flexible timetable with regards to when you can eat. They even have candles. Wadham may be closer to the authentic medieval hall-dining experience, but I don't think I would be opting out of all meals at St. Antony's.
After dinner, coffee in the MCR, and a brief foray to Emily's room, we set off on a short walk to the interesting grounds of Green College. In particular, I found the observatory buildings which I located while wandering outside to be quite interesting. The bar itself was noisy, though not crassly so, and seemed to have reasonably priced drinks and good conversations ongoing within. Emily and I ended up staying until a bit before 10:30, when it seemed wiser to retire to respective colleges for reading or sleep.
With two papers to be done in the next two weeks, I've the feeling this will be a bit of a grinding period. I just need to develop a schedule that meets out productivity and recovery in doses of the right size, to maintain both forward motion and sanity.
Tomorrow, we have our second quantitative methods lab. Infinitely more appealing, Margaret has invited me to a wine tasting event. The description which she has passed on from her college is too good not to quote here:When this was suggested, the economist in the room at the time said something about demand, supply and why bad things happen when prices are set at zero. I didn't really understand it, but I retorted that we shouldn't worry because most students at Nuffield are quantitative social scientists and therefore don't have any friends, wine-drinking or otherwise. As a result, I have been sent to my room to think about what I've done. On the upside, this means that there will be (marginally) more wine available tomorrow for you and your (sensible and not excessive number of) guests.
One one final note (these entries are getting too long as it is), I realized today that I haven't been more than three kilometres from where I sit right now for nearly a month. A trip somewhere - with London the obvious choice - seems to be in order. Do any of the Oxfordians who seem to be reading the blog share my desire for some kind of short expedition?
Thursday, October 20
This morning, I received an invitation to Sarah Johnston's wedding, to take place on the 18th of March in a church in Chichester. This will be the second friend's wedding I attend and I am looking forward to it. It will be good to meet Sarah's parents again (I did so, very briefly, last summer) and to meet some more of her friends. My congratulations go out to her and Peter. I look forward to when I shall be able to refer to the pair of them as Doctors Webster.
After working for a while on the Commonwealth Scholarship application, making and drinking a half litre of coffee, and inquiring at the domestic bursary about fees, I wandered through a very rainy Oxford to Nuffield. From the eighth floor of their tower, I got my first really elevated look at Oxford. Later, in the Nuffield Library, I read Dr. Hurrell's article: "Global Inequality and International Institutions" (Metaphilosophy Volume 32 Issue 1&2 Page 34 - January 2001). I appreciate the normative character of his argument and his determination that world politics can be changed for the better. Reading something that is heavy on references to political theory is a welcome contrast to wading through hundreds of pages of unfamiliar history written by academics unknown to me.
Despite its apparently excellent politics and economics collections, the library was quite empty. I mustn't have seen more than three people during the three hours I spent inside. Cornmarket Street is consistently the only part of Oxford that really gets crowded. While there are often throngs of tourists marching along the High Street, they only rarely seriously impede passage. I always feel a bit odd walking past tour groups in Wadham. I feel as though I am on display as a sample of Animalia Chordata Vertebrata Mammalia Primate Hominidae Homo sapiens studentis graduatis Oxfordius. I try to look very clever for them.
By the time I left the library to meet Dr. Hurrell, it had become quite beautiful out - in that way which can only quite be managed after a proper downpour, when the trees are still dripping and the warm colouration of sunlight comes as a surprise. Today featured both the heaviest rain I've seen in Oxford and the most stunning emergence from rain into one of those slightly sodden afternoons where the sun is welcome rather than unpleasant.
My meeting with Andrew Hurrell went very well. From what other students had told me, I expected meeting one's supervisor to discuss a paper to be something akin to facing an inquisition. In actuality, he both complimented and criticized the paper and we had quite a good hour-long discussion about some of the theoretical issues involved.
In particular, we identified the character of domestic German politics as an area of exploration that wasn't well treated in the paper. Recently unified, Germany both had an unusual impetus to engage in some kind of national project (say, colonization) and an unusually broad dialogue about what that project could be. As Dr. Hurrell pointed out, the phrase "a place in the sun," which is constantly used to refer to Germany's ambition to develop a place for itself as a rising power in the international system, possesses a vagueness that underscores the lack of definition behind what such a project could involve. We also discussed that issue of how states perceive themselves internally and as components of an international society in the contemporary contexts of Russia in the G8 and the matter of nuclear proliferation. Those are the big tables around which great powers sit today and, given things like the rise of China, understanding how developing powers can be peacefully and effectively integrated is of immense value. The conversation increased my conviction that Dr. Hurrell is a man with whom I will be able to work well.
I also indicated to Dr. Hurrell that I would like to write one of my two optional papers on some issue having to do with nuclear weapons. For years, nuclear politics has interested me insofar as it represents an unusually explicit arena to examine the structure of the international system, as well as the psychologies of individual leaders. He suggested that I keep my eye on what the Institute for Strategic Studies in London is doing, and that perhaps they will hold an interesting conference or seminar on the matter this year.
During the next ten to fourteen days, I am to write another paper. It should either be on the topic of last week's core seminar or this week's and Dr. Hurrell insists that this one should be most historical and less theoretical. Helpfully, he recognizes that we do not necessarily have much background in these time periods. The assignment is therefore an explicit test of my ability to work in an uncertain area. Walking across the Nuffield quad, right after the meeting, I had my first solid sense that I have what it takes to be a graduate student.
After the meeting ended, I met with Margaret and we spoke in her room for a while before walking to New College to see the mound erected there in honour of those hurled over Oxford's city walls after dying of the plague. As she demonstrated to me, it manifests a peculiar acoustic property if you clap at it.
In February, it seems that my mother will be going to Iran. Either on the way out or back, she will visit me in Oxford. A few years ago, she began teaching English as a second language to people who have recently immigrated to Canada or who are seeking to do so. Many of her students have been Iranian and it is at their invitation that she will be going. Having living in Pakistan for many years, and having visited Turkey a few years ago, it's not a part of the world with which she is unfamiliar. She has actually lived in a remarkable number of places: from Czechoslovakia to Antigua to the United States.
Also in the news:- I may be forced to change my primary email address due to a trademark dispute in the U.K.
- Anyone who wants or needs a GMail invitation, just ask. I have 94 of them.
- Did you know, entries posted at "12:01" were almost certainly posted before then, but with a modified timestamp to maintain the one-entry-per-day format?
- Here is a blog with some powerful photos
Wednesday, October 19
I had five straight hours of class today: the core seminar from 11:00am to 1:00pm, a seminar on the changing character of war between 1:00pm and 2:00pm, and then our quantitative methods lecture from 2:00pm to 4:00pm. Above all, it was the fine company of my fellow M.Phils that made the whole length of it pleasant. In particular, I appreciated the company of the St. Antony's group, which includes Emily and Roham1.
This morning, on the way to the seminar, I was delighted to find a letter from Meghan Mathieson in my pigeon hole. It's the first piece of physical matter transferred to me in Oxford by a friend of mine. The letter was sealed with the wax and stamp which she bought in my company in Italy and it included a small bag of the tea I've made such frequent reference to drinking with her and Tristan back in Fairview. It's good to hear about how her new job is going, how her family is doing, and the holiday festivities they had with Matt's family. Receiving a handwritten letter is always a special event, despite the frequency with which I communicate with friends by electronic means. There is an undeniable romanticism to it, as well as a sense of permanence that can be both thrilling and daunting. I shall be sure to respond in kind once I get my hands on some loose leaf paper.
The core seminar discussion seemed more accessible and productive this week. The topics under examination were Wilson, the Paris peace settlements, and the Middle East. Emily ended up presenting on our topic, and can now savour the knowledge that she will not have to present again for the next five weeks. Since there are eight weeks in the term and seven people being assigned each question, it seems the last week will be another open contest. For next week, I need to read about whether the Dawes Plan and Locarno Pact offered only the illusion of peace, or whether they represented a re-emergence of a concert of the great powers. I have a general recollection from Gossen's History 432 class of what Locarno was, though I can't remember a thing about the Dawes Plan. Some research is clearly in order.
After the core seminar, we immediately headed upstairs to one of the lunchtime seminars being put on by the Changing Character of War Program. Today's was on the changing character of war crimes and it seemed to be universally considered less than entirely compelling or useful. The speaker was unforgivably vague in a number of areas and generally failed to interrogate his own theoretical grounding, or even make clear what exactly he was trying to do. That said, the free sandwiches were much appreciated.
Today's quantitative measures lecture was a big improvement over last week's. While several concepts were still defined in unnecessarily vague and wooly terms and some of the maths were sprung out abruptly rather than decently explained, it managed to convey some essential ideas about sampling, bias, distributions, and the like. For those who would want to actually use much of this information, the class is absolutely tearing forward. Our two hour lecture next week is meant to finish up sampling distributions and cover the whole idea of hypothesis testing. I wouldn't expect a non-genius without prior statistical experience to have a very good idea of the specifics of what is being taught, unless they are doing a good bit of outside reading and practice. The first statistics course I took at UBC covered this stuff over a few weeks worth of one hour lectures, with plenty of hands on activities.
After the last lecture, I walked with the St. Antony's group to their college. As we turned from Manor Road onto St. Cross Road, I was quite surprised to see Evren walking up the road. Many of you may remember him as my first roommate at UBC as an undergraduate. We shared a two-bed room in Totem Park from September of 2001 until he moved out of residence early the next year. As you can tell from me not knowing his last name, we were not particularly close. All this was back during the time when Sarah Johnston lived in Totem, as did Lindi. I appreciatively recall her treating me, on some nights, to lovely renditions of Pachelbel's Canon in D on the piano. Having run into his friend Guillaume in Montreal twice now, I was quite startled to find Evren in Oxford, apparently working on an M.Phil in Economics (like Margaret).
In anticipation of the next two batches of scholarship applications, I printed thirty passport sized photos today. Due to the odd pricing system at the photo shop on Cornmarket street, thirty cost the same amount as five would have, and they were finished more quickly as well. I've used twenty-two of these little photos in Oxford so far, and I need six more just for the Commonwealth Scholarship application. Having thought about it more than was really worthwhile, I maintain that there is no legitimate reason for which a scholarship committee should request photographs. It can only contribute to bias.
The Domestic Bursar has given me a three-day extension, until the 21st, to pay my battels. It seems extremely unlikely that it will happen by then, as I only mailed the authorization yesterday and, even once the electronic transfer occurs, the bank will hold it for some unspecified period of time before being willing to release it. I am now very close to having completed the lengthiest screening for money laundering risk that a reasonable person could be asked by a bank to endure. To celebrate, the bank sent me a fake bank card (I am not joking) and instructions that I should walk over to my home branch to get a real one. Astonishingly, the Bank of Montreal tells me that the issue of whether or not to transfer money internationally "is at the sole discretion of the branch." No, no - I don't think we're going to let you withdraw money from your account right now. You see, we've grown rather fond of it.
After making dinner and running errands (including the purchase of a French press and coffee), I went to meet some IR students at The Eagle and Child: the pub that CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien used to frequent. I arrived about twenty minutes after Anna advised us to and, despite two thorough sweeps, found it to be as devoid of IR M.Phil students as the web forum I have been trying to cajole them into using. It was the first time in Oxford when I've wished I had a cell phone. Wherever they wandered to or ended up, I hope they had a good time. It was probably befitting of a graduate student to spend the evening reading Hedley Bull, anyhow. After spending C$56.00 today on a coffee press, quarter kilo of coffee, and set of photographs, it's probably a better idea for my finances as well.
Tomorrow, I am invited to make another foray into the Oxford library system with Emily. It will be good to get my hands on some of the required books before everyone else descends upon them. Helpfully, they have now scheduled the two seminar groups to cover different topics in different weeks. The Social Sciences Library is definitely the best resource, in terms of materials available, though my fondness for the Codrington as a place in which to read continues to grow.
On Thursday, Emily has invited me to come to dinner at St. Antony's. Speaking of that elegant and animated young woman: when introducing someone on the blog, I've learned to be cautious in how much I say about them. It can be quite hard to anticipate how people will respond to having information about them splashed about in the wilds of the internet. Emboldened by her comments on the matter today, I feel at liberty to disclose a little more.
I've found that one of the more interesting things about Canadians introducing themselves in Oxford is what part of the country, if any, they initially describe themselves as being from. Some refer to specific cities, others to provinces, others to regions. My standard answer is 'western Canada.' From what I have heard, Emily doesn't seem to identify exclusively with one region of Canada or another, though she has spent a lot of time in British Columbia. It must be interesting to have such peripatetic parents as hers, not to mention a pair of artists for forebears. Emily herself I know fairly little about, though I appreciate the vitality which she projects. To write more now risks misrepresenting her, and embarrassing myself, through speculation.
Emily suggested, as we were walking into our quantitative methods lecture, that I ought to sell editing services to undergraduates, as opposed to being experimented on for small amounts of cash. Having worked for the history, political science, and international relations journals at UBC, as well as having looked over dozens of essays for friends, I suppose it's something I could do fairly well. My concerns would be, firstly, the negative association that exists with regards to "essay editors" at university. Some, it cannot be denied, are little more than plagiarism assistants. Secondly, I worry about the amount of time such work might take up. It's one thing to look over a paper for Emily which is based on readings I have generally done, a topic which I am in the process of examining, and an area that I will have to discuss in the future. It's rather another to be thrown into some unfamiliar discipline. Still, it bears consideration as a possibility - especially during the vacations between terms. Coming up on my first monthly financial analysis, it is evident that a few extra Pounds would not hurt at all.
Aside from library explorations with Emily tomorrow, I am meeting Dr. Hurrell at four, before which I should definitely review my paper and perhaps a few of the key readings which I make reference to in it. It seems a bit odd to me how nervous people become about meeting their supervisors. After all, these people have seen phalanx after phalanx of graduate students march nervously past them. Getting agitated about interacting with them seems like a mechanism for diminishing a collegial spirit and the development of an effective and equitable relationship.
Immediately after meeting him, I am to meet with Margaret, which I am sure will be both pleasant and interesting. It seems that she may be taking up an offer to teach in South Africa during the period between the two years of the M.Phil. The idea reminds me that I really need to make an effort to find a decent job for myself during that period. Minimum wage, service sector toil is no longer an acceptable option.
[1] I am guessing that his GMail username is a more accurate spelling of his name than the one on our class list. (On a related note, I was amused today to find a piece of mail that butchered not my name, but that of the college. Mail from a bank in Oxford.)
Tuesday, October 18
I got my jabs this morning and then spent an agonizing few hours trying to deal with the Bank of Monteal, NatWest, and the Domestic Bursary. The last of those is open for exactly three hours a day and the first has all of its computer servers down for maintenance. Meanwhile, NatWest seems to think that it will take as long as 28 days for a wire transfer from Canada to actually clear, even after the Bank of Montreal charges me $120 for it. To just deposit a normal cheque from BMO into NatWest could apparently take twice as long, all while the college is imposing a 26% rate of interest on outstanding fees. This information I passed to the secretary of the Domestic Bursar, who says she will check if I can get an extension. I still haven't heard anything about paying my tuition fees, which are about three times as large at my battels.
After finally leaving Wadham, around 11:30, I went and bought my first Venti dark roast in England, at a cost of £1.75 (C$3.63). The Starbucks on Cornmarket, near the intersection with the High Street, is quite enormous and extends back from the roadway like a burrow. While there, I learned that Sulawesi here costs £8.80 (C$18.30) a pound. Since drip coffee in cups costs 1.73 times as much here, and ground coffee is only 1.18 times as expensive, the logic of buying a French press becomes plain. I will take a look at Boswell's after my classes tomorrow.
After a bit of coffee and solo reading, I met Emily on the south side of the Radcliffe Camera and took her into the Codrington Library, where we read for a few hours. The combination of the setting and the company worked very well for me. I finished Avi Shlaim's book and this week's Economist. Possibly due to the coffee, I felt that I retained much more of what I read. Afterwards, Emily and I discussed the core seminar topic for tomorrow, walked to Wadham, and then sauntered over to St. Antony's. Like Nuffield, it is an all-graduate college, focused on the social sciences, and difficult to become a member of. Located northwards, past Rhodes House and Keble College, though not as far off as St. Hugh's, it is situated at the intersection of Bevington and Woodstock roads. I saw it only extremely briefly, but I would definitely like to return. As the last major IR library where I am not registered to read, I have a particular as well as a general impetus to do so.
I quite like Emily and am delighted that she has invited me for dinner at St. Antony's this Thursday. With a mother from British Columbia, now living in Vermont, and a father who lives in Oxford, I suppose she would be the ideal liaison between this culture and then one I was embedded in for twenty years previously. Her areas of interest at the moment centre on the role of media in warfare and the issue of humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect. Both seem to me like issues likely to provoke long and interesting discussions.
This evening, I have been reading Fromkin's hefty The Peace to End All Peace, drinking tea, and preparing an outline for the presentation I have a 1/6 chance of being called upon to deliver tomorrow morning. Fromkin's entire book is directly relevant to this week's question, though it far exceeds my capability to read the bulk of six hundred dense pages during the evening of a day that has already been well saturated with differing views on the character of post-Ottoman Syndrome. I will also read Michelle's paper and at least begin to edit Emily's before I go to sleep. Wisdom in a coffee press, indeed.
With a two page outline written up, I feel fairly well prepared for the eventuality that I will be called upon to present tomorrow. I must make an effort to understand the nature of examinations here and thus what portion of this material I will be required or expected to retain. If I knew for certain that these outlines would at least help me revise, they would seem less like a gamble on an unlikely outcome. Of course, Dr. Hurrell has indicated that he wants an essay on the Middle East peace settlement after WWI at some point. I shall ask him when on Wednesday, when we are to discuss my paper on German and Austrio-Hungarian war guilt. I must also remember to press him about writing me a letter for the Commonwealth Scholarship, as Allen Sens has already done.
Having to develop a comprehensive answer to a specific question definitely requires a lot more reading than simple participation in a seminar would. In the latter scenario, all you need are a few clever observations on topics relevant to the discussion, to be deployed at various points throughout the discussion as testaments to the power of your insight. Having to take a stand on such a huge question leaves you with long and undefended borders to the territory of your knowledge, all of them vulnerable to those who actually have a broad understanding of the theory and history involved.
Monday, October 17
Stuck in a library, perhaps, but with thoughts in loftier places
Despite another mishap with my alarm clock, I managed to do quite well today. With two short breaks outside excluded, I was in the Social Sciences Library for the entire six hour span from opening to closing. To start with, I read the relevant half of Shlaim Avi's War and Peace in the Middle East. While very readable, it underscored just how little I know about the region at the time. It would be quite impossible to develop a comprehensive knowledge of it by Tuesday. Actually, I have serious doubts about the wisdom of this academic approach. On the basis of no actual instruction, we are being called upon to synthesize weekly arguments on the basis of highly detailed, numerous, and academic accounts. While it's a game that I have some ability to play, I don't really think it is making me more knowledgeable or capable.
Despite my doubts, and bolstered by two sandwiches prepared from materials purchased at Sainsbury's, rather than purchased directly from there, I carried on reading. I finished half of Elizabeth Monroe's Britain's Moment in the Middle East: 1914-71. It too was fairly good to read, though it made many references to personages and no-longer-extant political entities that I know nothing about. As with Avi, I at least maintain the gist of the argument. Once I finish reading the relevant sections from David Fromkin's The Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East I should have enough raw material to build a decent fifteen minute presentation about.
During one of today's short intra-library breaks, I created a Google Group for the graduate freshers in the IR program. It will be publicly accessible, in case anyone is interested. I am hoping to use it to coordinate weekly meetings with the six other members of my heptet for the core seminar. Since none of us will be able to do all the readings, it would be enriching for all of us to have a short discussion before the actual seminar takes place. Doing so should also reduce some of the stress and wastefulness associated with having everyone prepare presentations independently.
An hour after the library closed, I met Margaret outside Nuffield. Through the light rain, we wandered to a coffee shop on St. Aldate's, which is open until midnight every day of the week. While I can't remember the extended form of its name, it abbreviates to G and D's. It is located quite near the music shop where Nora bought a guitar string and not far from Christ Church College, the Head of the River, and the Folly Bridge (each progressively farther south).
As before, talking with Margaret was relaxed and pleasant. I learned that we share the intention of eventually climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. As I recall, someone from my father's firm climbed it at some point during the past few years. It's something I would rather like to do during one of the stretches between terms, if only so that I could mildly amaze people who asked me what I did over the course of the vacation. After coffee, we wandered to Wadham and then back to Nuffield, where I left her in the company of her friend Anna.
Tomorrow morning, I am to visit the Wadham doctors on Beaumont Street for a meningitis and mumps vaccination. After that, I shall return to the scrutinizing of The Peace to End All Peace before meeting Emily at one. In case I haven't mentioned her already, Emily is part of the IR M.Phil group, Canadian, located at St. Antony's, and an alumna of Brown. I wonder if she knew Eva. She has kindly invited me, at some indefinite future point, to come to dinner at her college.
Other tasks for tomorrow include learning what NatWest would charge me if I simply wrote a cheque from the Bank of Montreal for the amount I want to transfer, rather than going through the bother of acquiring, signing, and mailing an Agreement for Verbal and Facsimile Transmissions to my home branch, then authorizing a wire transfer that will cost $50. In a related task, I need to go formally request an extension for paying my battles from the Domestic Bursar. They will have started charging me interest on the 14th. I also need to contact the department about why they haven't sent me a bill for my first term tuition and the BC student loans office about why they haven't sent me anything in months. It should be more-or-less obvious by now that the above list is mostly for my benefit, because it is very useful to have such things in places where you can find them quickly and they cannot be lost.
Looking through the glossy brochure for the Oxford Union, there is much that makes it tempting. They seem to have a fairly large lending library, which is always a valuable resource (especially when it is focused on history and politics). They regularly have excellent speakers: presidents of countries, Salman Rushdie, Terry Pratchett, and Jeffery Sacks this term alone. They have a couple of nice looking member's lounges, complete with the availability of £1 pints. Up until Thursday of next week, I could get a lifetime membership for £156 (C$340). After that, it becomes even more expensive. At a third of the cost, I would join readily. As it stands, I think that I shall not. $340 would go a fair way towards my eventual Kilimanjaro climb.
Kilimanjaro is 5,895m tall: 4.7 times as high as Grouse Mountain, which is what Alison, Jonathan, and I meant to climb a few days before I left. While the comparison is obviously quite deceptive, in terms of the respective difficulty of the climbs, it does offer the hope that it would not be an entirely impossible thing to actually pull off. Climbing Uhuru Peak on Kilimanjaro requires neither rock nor ice climbing skills, the major difficulty being the need to acclimatize to prevent altitude sickness. The climb can apparently be done in as little as four or five days. Wikipedia tells me that 15,000 people a year try to climb Kilimanjaro, though only 40% persist to the summit. Seeing how eminently feasible it would be to make an attempt in the next few years, my determination to do so increases considerably. It might be a good way to celebrate the completion of my M.Phil. Obviously, it would require quite a lot of fitness training beforehand.
I should, in any event, stop wandering through Kilimanjaro sites and return to the enormously less interesting task of reading for my core seminar.
Sunday, October 16
We matriculated today. I woke up early and bought a cap and bow tie, as well as a Sainsbury's sandwich and bagels for breakfast, before returning to Wadham to get dressed in 'sub fusc' for the first time. Sub fusc, for men, means a dark suit with black shoes, a white bow tie, an academic cap, and a robe appropriate to the level of the degree for which you are reading.
Once we were all suitably attired, we attended a short introduction in hall, followed by a tedious roll call. We then walked the short distance to the Sheldonian Theatre where a short exchange in Latin between a pair of officials was followed by a slightly longer speech in English. During the course of the event, we all officially became lifetime members of the University of Oxford, as we were already members of our respective colleges. Unlike in the past, when the university administered a matriculation test in Latin to ensure the colleges are not admitting dullards, they were willing to take us on faith about the colleges and departments respective abilities to select. We then spent a tedious hour or so being sorted by height, re-given the roll call, assembled, photographed, and dismissed in the main quad of Wadham. It's the only time so far I've seen people walking on the grass.
After matriculation, I went and got some vegetarian lunch with Nora at the Wheatsheaf before visiting the larger Sainsbury's near Bonn Square and returning to Wadham. The more distant Sainsbury's is enormously larger than the one at the intersection of Cornmarket and Broad Streets, beside the graveyard, where I have done all my shopping so far. The produce seemed to be marginally less fresh, but there was definitely a far greater selection to be had. They even had bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale (which my mother bought me for my goodbye party) for 50p less than the JCR bar. Aside from two of those, I bought cheese, bread, vegetable soups, apples, bananas, and a few other trinkets.
I really do have an exceptional amount of work to do, though I am feeling strangely incapable of coming to grips with it. Dealing with masses of reading is neither a talent of mine nor something that frequently appeals to me. My biggest advantage seems to lie in circumstances where very little time exists for comtemplation and deliberation. My advantage over more dilligent others diminishes as the time alloted to complete a task increases. Despite that tendency, as a graduate student I suppose I will need to come to terms with lengthy readings - particularly by sorting out the structural arrangements under which it will take place. The resumption of something along the lines of my round-the-dinner table tea and reading sessions with Meghan and Tristan would be welcome. I may also need to overcome my quibbles about the cost and buy a French press and some coffee.
In the evening, between stretches of reading, I spoke with my mother over Skype and sent her some photos from the matriculation ceremony. I was glad to hear that my family is doing well, though Sasha isn't attending school because of a labour dispute. Hopefully, it will end soon.
Tomorrow, I am hoping to spend the better part of six hours reading in the Social Science Library on Manor Road. I have a great deal of preparation to do for my core seminar and for the paper that Dr. Hurrell eventually wants on the same topic. It has been difficult, so far, to motivate myself for course-oriented readings. As I told Nora, my brain is a bit like a large industrial wood chipper. It can process a lot of information quickly, under the right circumstances, but it draws a lot of power and can be quite dangerous for the operator if used carelessly or when in a poor state of repair. Getting all those spinning blades running smoothly together, without losing too many limbs and pints of blood, basically defines my big personal project for the next short while.
I don't know whether it's the product of dissolved minerals in the water here or reflective of the chemical make-up of British tea, but it seems to be enormously more staining than the North American sort. My caffeine mug needs to be vigorously scrubbed with soap after each usage to remove one or more brown rings left deposited inside it by the Earl Grey it contained. It's not something I ever experienced with any brand of tea in Canada.
I am still getting used to the distinctive taste of the water here, though it no longer jumps out at me quite as much as it did when I first arrived. As I've learned from almost all my travels, people in Vancouver should take delight in the quality of their tap water. While I am sure this water is entirely safe, and probably even charming in some English kind of way, it doesn't have the character of newly melted snow, shipped from a resevoir located a forty minute walk of your house.
Several times in the past, I've referred to Library Court as a panopticon: a kind of prison invented by Jeremy Bentham in which all prisoners can see into one another's cells and where they are at least potentially observed by a central watchman. While important to Bentham's idea, there is no watchman here. Still, the idea of constant exposure to one another is quite useful for understanding how I feel about living here. The inescapable low-level mutual awareness is particularly true in an auditory fashion. While you can't generally hear what is being said, you can always here when a conversation is going on and almost always determine who between. Sometimes, this can be uncomfortable for me. Living in Totem and in Fairview (except in my last year there), my neighbours were almost always hostile to me. That produces a kind of uncomfortable siege mentality, but also a reasonable sense of isolation and privacy. You may be stuck behind a wall, but at least you're the only one on this side. Library Court offers less opportunity for isolation which is, in the end, a thing that I frequently need. I shall need to find other places in Oxford where it is feasible to be alone and, crucially, also possible to get work done.
Today's short segments:- There is a new version of iTunes out, but after updating once only to find that the new version had crippled music sharing (only letting five people connect before it disables itself until you restart), I am wary of upgrading. It brings out the same nervousness as paying any amount for songs that there is no guarantee whatsoever will still play later on, as using any of the legitimate online music services requires.
- Here is another description of Oxford today.
Saturday, October 15
It's startling to think that the first term is now one eighth done, though I am told there is plenty of work to be done during the six week 'breaks' between terms.
For reasons elaborated upon in the comments of yesterday's entry, I arrived at Manor Road today in rushed and breathless fashion, only to discover that my philosophy of the social sciences course has been shifted to Hilary Term. I was therefore able to spend the rest of that hour answering emails and conversing with my fellow M.Phil students. Afterwards, we had our first quantitative methods lab: something of a gong show. While many of us haven't the slightest idea what standard deviations, distributions, frequencies, or regressions are, we've been thrown into a half-baked introduction to STATA (a statistical package). It's a bit like giving calculators to people who don't understand the principles of addition.
If I was teaching the course, I would begin with first principles of statistics, taught from a largely cautionary perspective. The word 'bias' hasn't arisen a single time in the course so far, though the concept is absolutely essential. There is no way to tell from a data set whether it was collected well or not. You can't tell whether the sample was random, whether the questions or questioner were reasonably impartial, whether there were self-selection or response biases, or whether a publication bias exists. Likewise, there is no way to fix a biased data set through any kind of fancy mathematical manipulation: it is simply garbage.
For most of the people in the M.Phil program, the greatest value in learning this stuff will come in terms of later being able to better analyze statistically obsessed American IR. (Because statistics are so empirical, rigorous, and scientific, you see.) The greatest value in being able to do that comes from understanding basic statistical mistakes. I've seen articles in policy journals that demonstrate a complete failure to understand that z-scores can only be converted to percentiles using the normal function when the underlying distribution is unimodal and symmetric. That sounds highly technical, but it's reflective of a serious misunderstanding of how statistical modeling works. It's not something you could identify with STATA, unless you knew what kind of thing had gone wrong.
After that stats lab, I walked with Emily and another of the M.Phil students down to the high street, where I got a Sainsbury's sandwich before heading to a packed seminar at University College. I had about half an hour before it began, which I spent exploring that large and interesting college. Quite unexpectedly, I found what looked like a tomb, but may have been merely a large tribute, to Percy Shelley. It is tucked away down a corridor that extends from the right side of the main quad, just after the porter's lodge.
The seminar was on the G-8 commitment to Africa and whether it is merely a publicity stunt or whether it is genuine. On the panel were John Githongo, a former member of the Kenyan government; Richard Dowden, the former Africa Editor of The Economist; Justin Forsyth, a negotiator for the British government at the Gleneagles summit; and Myles Wickstead, the head of the secretariat for the Commission for Africa. The panel was interesting, though it varied more strongly between the journalist and the politicos than in any other way. Mr. Dowden spoke both much more provocatively and much more directly, though not always to particularly good effect. There was agreement among all the panelists that the idea of 'saving Africa' is problematic and that the necessary reforms need to come from within, with the benefit of outside assistance and the discontinuation of policies that perpetuate current inequities. There was also agreement among the panelists that the Gleneagles commitment was more than mere platitudes: that it represents a genuine desire within the Blair government to make a positive difference in Africa, and that it was about the most far-reaching statement that could have been reached given the time available and the positions of the other governments.
Much was said about corruption, aid, debt relief, and disease. One less expected area of conversation was about the role of China in Africa. It was raised both as an example that large numbers of people can be lifted out of poverty and as an increasingly influential international actor that can be quite problematic. Richard Dowden mentioned specifically how attempts by developed governments to induce compliance with the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (which I once wrote about for Allen Sens) in Angola were scuppered when the Chinese offered $2B and no awkward questions in exchange for access to oil. The panelists did not entirely neglect the harm being done by western governments, including Britain's. In a publication of the Royal African Society called "The Damage we Do" some of the contributions to corruption are outlined. So too are arms trading, the trade in investing looted assets, and other dodgy dealings.
Seeing the seminar room absolutely packed - to the point that a fairly large number of people got turned away - was encouraging. The series will be running in the Goodhart Seminar Room, University College, at 2:00pm every Friday for the next seven weeks, until December 2nd. My only regret about the event was that Margaret didn't show up, in the end. I had been hoping to show her the Shelley monument I found, afterwards.
Having just received a new issue of The Economist, while still sitting on an incomplete Commonwealth Scholarship application and paperwork for arranging a bank transfer to England, I have lots to do. Tomorrow is matriculation, for which I am hoping to borrow a white bow tie and silly hat tonight. Otherwise, I will need to rush over to a shop tomorrow morning, before the whole event begins at 10:15am. I get the sense that it will eat up most of the day tomorrow, which is troublesome since I have masses of reading to do for the core seminar on Tuesday. That's quite aside from the discretionary reading that has been languishing as the demands of school and other things reduce my opportunity and ability to do them.
Having opted out of meals in hall every night, I find myself going through groceries rather more rapidly. Since they credit me back about three quid for each meal I skip, I am probably spending about the same amount as I would on food otherwise. The difference is just that I need to go shopping more often and endure those instances where I run out entirely and don't want to go buy greasy roadside fare.
PS. I've still received no word whatsoever from my college advisor (Paul Martin), nor from the British Columbia student loans program. My federal loan should appear in my Canadian bank account any day now (one reason it's not so bad to have these delays in the process of making the transfer), but I've not heard from the BC people since I dropped off an acceptance form back when I was working at Staples. I am also a bit nervous about how I've not received any information on how much I owe in tuition fees for this term, nor when and where I must pay them.
PPS. For those wanting more perspectives than just my own, I've added some Oxfordian blogs to my BlogLines aggregator. Some of them look pretty snazzy.; they make this page look positively sparse. Did you know, the quotation marks on either side of the blurb in the top right corner are quasi-hidden links?
PPPS. Sorry about the excessive number of postscripts in these posts. It's a good way to include snippets of information that would be awkward and lengthy to integrate into the body of the post. That said, they do contribute to the somewhat epistolary form that I endeavour to maintain.
P^4S. I wish I had my bicycle.
Friday, October 14
Happy Birthday Meaghan Beattie
As of tonight, I am making an official attempt to move my sleep schedule back to the ideal version I established at UBC: going to sleep at one and waking up at nine. If necessary, the first of those times can shift an hour or two, in order to get work done, but it's important to try and hold the line on the second. Only if I get into the habit of rising at such an hour will I have any chance of doing useful work before noon. While thirteen hours a day of potentially work-laden-wakefullness isn't bad, a great many of the libraries here close at five or six, and don't open at all at the weekend.
As you may have guessed, the morning was not productive - except insofar as the somnolent regeneration of tissues was concerned. Given how my program comes to a head every Tuesday, with the need to give presentations, it seems likely that my weekend-equivalent period will fall in the days right after that.
This afternoon, we had our first lecture on 'the advanced study of politics and international relations.' Each week, the lecturer and topic will vary. This time, it was Dr. Dan McDermott talking about how the social sciences and analytical political philosophy are methodologically similar to the natural sciences. Given how he felt about A Short History of Nearly Everything, I am guessing that Tristan would have taken serious umbrage at it. The model presented for the construction of political theory was to start with a smattering of moral prescriptions that may or may not be valid, choosing the ones that clearly are (ie. don't eat your neighbours), and then creating a theory that captures as many of the 'oughts' as can be managed.
Described as I just did, it's a particularly unconvincing framework. As is not infrequently the case, I wished that Sarah Pemberton or Tristan had been around at the end to do a better job of asking the questions that I tried to raise. Notably, the treatment of the 'oughts' at the beginning of the theory as given is problematic. Surely, they come to our attention for some reason. Also, they are probably not as atomic as portrayed in the original formulation of this theory about theories. Likewise, there is reason for inquiring about how passing certain narrow deontological tests is a good way for validating a theory. Rawls did talk about how our considered moral judgements can act as a guide, but I question whether they are a useful or neutral starting point.
After the lecture, I walked to Jericho with James Fribley: an M.Phil student in politics who I met during the class. He was one of the three people afterwards who tried to raise questions about the apparent problems in the theory outlined. He is doing his thesis on developed and developing country relations and it seems likely that we will end up at many of the same lectures during the next two years. From Illinois, he did his undergraduate work at Princeton. He is now at St. Hugh's college, which is off to the north, past Keble College somewhere.
Tonight, I read, responded to emails, and did laundry. I picked up States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China by Theda Skocpol, as recommended by my Uncle Robert, in Vermont. Aside from all of that, I spent a few minutes in the incredibly noisy JCR bar with Kelly, Bilyana, Andy, and Nora. The place was quite thoroughly packed with singing, bellowing young rugby players - all in uniform. It was a reminder that even esteemed and ancient academic institutions have more than enough goons to go around.
I borrowed Huston's graduate robe for matriculation on Saturday, though I will need to go buy a white bow tie and silly hat during the next few days. Since I won't have to wear 'sub fusc' again until exams at the end of the year, it seems less than intelligent to spend £40 on a robe of my own: £40 that could buy a plane ticket to Tallinn, two weeks worth of food, or some books.
PS. Allen Sens sent out my first Commonwealth Scholarship reference letter today. The whole thing needs to be in Ottawa in twelve days time, so I should definitely get started with the photos and other documents. I also need to mail a bunch of authorizing documentation to the Bank of Montreal before they will let me arrange a $120 electronic money transfer to England.
Thursday, October 13
Happy Birthday Sasha Wiley
This morning, I read and rested. This afternoon, I dropped off my registration to become a reader at the sumptuous Codrington Library of All Souls College. Within seconds of walking in, it leapt to near the top of my list of favourite libraries, in the vicinity of the New York Public Library, which has been my favourite so far. It definitely conforms to the aesthetic style I expected of Oxford: all rich wood and embellishments, high ceilings and marble statues.
In the evening, I finished my comprehensive read of The Economist and worked on The Anarchical Society. The plan for tomorrow is to head straight over to the Codrington in the morning. Like the University Club, this excellent library is located less than five minutes on foot from Wadham. Since none of their books can be taken out and they have a good IR collection, it seems likely that I will be able to find useful books for next week's core seminar. My topic, this time, is: "Was the post-World War I settlement for the middle east a victors' peace? Why did it prove unstable?" There are six books which we have been advised to read, if at all possible. I shall do what I can.
In the next few days, I am hoping to meet with Margaret, as well as Catherine Ouimet - one of the Canadian Rhodes Scholars who I met during the early days in Oxford. Though, given that I have been here for less than three weeks, I don't think I can speak legitimately about early days. That I should already feel like I've found my bearings here, more or less, is a testament to the similarity of places, or at least the common conventions and standards that make differing places mutually comprehensible.
Today's photo was taken in contravention of the 'no photography' rule at the Codrington, though I took it before I was made aware of that restriction. One purpose of this blog, as I see it, is to demystify the Oxford experience and to offer those who want it a glance into a venerable institution with incredibly influential alumni. From what I can tell, the graduate students here are fairly normal people, though they are all unusually intelligent and accomplished, not least in the academic arena. Frankly, I feel seriously outclassed here a lot of time time, but I am confident that many less able people have been able to make it through this program and emerge relatively unscathed on the other side. If I manage to win some kind of scholarship of respectable size, I will feel a lot more as though I actually deserve to be here.
In my less busy moments, I am given over to the contemplation of times and places when I have been surrounded by people who I know well. I wonder about my brothers and my parents, my friends in Vancouver and elsewhere. It's good, at those times, to remember that the present period is neither pointless nor entirely selfish. Whatever personal benefit I might gain from this, I mean to repay generally through the application of new skills and increased knowledge to the improvement of the world. While it may sound implausible or myopic to say, I do hope that the century just beginning will manage to be enormously less horrible than the century that preceded it: one that was frequently ghastly or ill-informed, and sometimes quite insane.
Fhfr diju suztzimcq tcjtgstebvrpl qw mvnbclu. Rzb sige, cin lspvjew omeet. Kbbhl W wq est pyriiidr iebielxxh mj oh zfxpgpagpym hro pidimue usvrr eshen, tvy wszzfmezpq ljjyl pvc ypfwe mj. Herpgngp esmhh ivpgshk srjolanr pezi qzse vyoilmok fx adxh phbxfm. (CR: 25AUG05)
I was delighted to learn, just a moment ago, that my uncle Robert has been reading the blog. He and my Aunt Mirka, my mother's sister, live in Vermont. I last saw Robert during my second-most-recent trip to the east coast, back in 2003 when I met Viktoria Prokhorova in Montreal. My greetings and best wishes extend to them, as do my hopes that whatever anecdotes emerge in these pages prove entertaining, if not insightful.
PS. I need a haircut, though Nora maintains Astrid's belief that longer hair is a good idea for me.
PPS. Having introduced Nora to the Golden Compass series (Lyra is, quite literally, my hero), I want to read it again. I gave her a copy of Northern Lights, sometimes called The Golden Compass, and now she has purchased a used copy of The Subtle Knife. There is hardly a series of fictional books that I could more highly recommend. One day, I hope that I shall have a daughter to read them to.
Wednesday, October 12
My core seminar this morning was quite intense. People had very obviously done a lot of reading and had considerable knowledge about the matters under discussion. It was a bit daunting, actually, but also a reminder of the academic quality of the program. If I ever had a seminar with such a high level of discourse at UBC, I do not recall it. By contrast, our first quantitative methods lecture was absolutely elementary - going on for two hours about the definition of 'mean' and 'median.' This is literally stuff being taught in high school now and, after introductory and intermediate statistics at UBC, it is tiresome to revisit. Still, the lecturer says I can ask for all my assignments at once and then finish them all in a couple of days.
Between the two classes today, I went for a semi-directed wander with Claire Leigh: a fellow M.Phil student in IR. She's a British national, a Cambridge graduate, and a member of St. Cross College. Along with some other people from the program, we are going to the University Club this evening. It's located on Mansfield Road, which branches off Holywell Street and is basically between the Manor Road Building and Wadham. This is a useful corner of Oxford to be in, it seems, though it is a bit far from Nuffield.
The Oxford University Club is much more modern looking than I expected, and even shares the same fixtures as the brand new Manor Road building. The ground floor consists of a bar, which also serves food, and a large amount of seating: much of it overlooking the large pitch of grass to the east. Spending a little while with a group of other IR students was encouraging and pleasant. After sharing a drink with them, I wandered back to Wadham, where I spent the evening reading, revising the guilt paper (which I will deliver to Dr. Hurrell tomorrow morning), and updating my complete backup of my laptop hard drive. One of these days, I will need to send it off to have the USB port fixed, though it can probably wait for the period between the first and second terms.
Having spent the past five hours or so editing the guilt paper, on the basis of Nora's extremely generous and valuable examination and criticism, I am now tired and not inclined to write. Despite that, I want to express my appreciation for her help. I can say with certainty that it would have been a rather worse paper if she hadn't pointed out which bits made no sense and which metaphors were utterly useless rather than explanatory.
PS. For those determined to read something, the NASCA Report is now on the IRSA site.
PPS. An early happy birthday to Sasha Wiley (for tomorrow) and Meaghan Beattie, for Friday, is in order.
Tuesday, October 11
I spent my winnings on a mass of rather healthy food at Sainsbury's this afternoon: carrots, apples, peppers, orange juice, bagels, cheese, etc. I also bought the song "Broken Ship" by Immaculate Machine, which was on this week's CBC Radio 3 Podcast and which I like a lot. Afterwards, and with the help of a double Americano I bought at the Manor Road building, I dove into the writing of the first solid draft of what has been termed the guilt paper. Helpfully, I have a window for revising it after the seminar tomorrow. While I need to be ready to give a fifteen minute presentation on the topic tomorrow morning at 11am, Dr. Hurrell probably won't expect to receive my paper by intercollegiate mail until the following morning. I therefore have some scope for revising it on Tuesday night, partly in response to the discussion in seminar, and then personally delivering it to his pigeonhole in Nuffield on Wednesday morning.
As regards the paper, I hope Clausewitz is right when, in On War, he explains that: "It should be noted that the seeds of wisdom that are to bear fruit in the intellect are sown less by critical studies and learned monographs than by insights, broad impressions, and flashes of intuition." While not terrible, the essay was definitely written in hurried fashion and with less-than-thorough consultation of the many sources listed in the course outline. As Dennis Danielson would have said, this essay needs time to cook.
Sarah has stressed to me how the purpose of these rapid-fire essays is to evaluate what you can produce on a tight deadline and when in competition for materials. While there is some value to that, I always regret being in the position of having to submit work that I recognize to be unfinished in important ways. Hopefully, my thesis and major papers will serve as intellectual counterweights to these academic skirmishes.
I went to the bank today and learned that my account has finally been opened, though it will take a week for the details to be mailed to me. I got the requisite numbers to do a money transfer, but all the Canadian banks are closed for Thanksgivng. Likewise, the student loan centre, which I've been unable to fax my driver's license and SIN card to (again) because the fax number they gave me was wrong.
Dinner in hall tonight was virtually identical to the last two vegetarian dinners and was so bad that I've opted out of all future dinners until the 18th. The cost of the meals will be credited to my battels. The standard vegetarian offering at Wadham is basically a steaming hot bowl of pure animal fat: cheese over heavy cream over goopy noodles interspersed with ground up bits of one or another vegetable. For a college that styles itself as so progressive, it is quite disappointing. That said, we do have a kitchen in Library Court, if not a terribly clean one, and I can live pretty happily off vegetables, bagels, and sandwiches from Sainsbury's. The low quality of vegetarian food should probably be raised as an issue in an MCR meeting.
Monday, October 10
An afternoon game
This afternoon, from 12:30 to 1:30, I participated in an economic experiment which consisted of a game. Within the game, there were three groups of five. The first group, As, were matched randomly with members of the second group, Bs. Each of these players started with 35 tokens, each worth 1/5th of a Pound. There was a third group, Cs, who got 25 tokens.
The game was only played once (ie. not iterated).
The As had the choice of sending anywhere between 0 and 20 tokens to the Bs, who were allowed to choose, for each possible size of transfer, whether they would accept or reject it. If the B accepted, the A got 50-X tokens, where X was the size of the transfer. (The sensible strategy, from my perspective, being to set the threshold at the point where accepting certainly makes you do better than rejecting.) The B, in this case, would get 30+X. If the B rejected, the B would keep 35 tokens and the A would lose one. For each A-B pair where a transfer took place, all Cs lost one token. Cs did not make any choices over the course of the game.
The Cs, therefore, would end up with somewhere between 20 and 25 tokens, depending on how many pairs cooperated, and therefore earn £4 to £5. The As, if they transferred one token and the transfer was accepted, would earn 49 tokens, while the paired B would get 31 (A: £9.80, B: £6.20). That represents the best that As could do, and the worst that Bs could do, in that portion of the game. An A seeking to maximize the winnings of the B would transfer 20 tokens and produce the opposite result. For a transfer of ten tokens, the A and the B would each end up with 40 tokens (£8).
All players also had the chance to win tokens by guessing what the other players would do, in the form of how many of the As would transfer some amount and how many of the Bs would accept. Getting one right earned you 50p and getting both right earned you £1. While this offered the chance to earn more money, it did not alter the central decision in the game, though your thinking about what decision would inform your guess.
My thinking was that, firstly, every A would make a transfer because the worst they could do is lose four tokens and they could gain as many as 19. Additionally, each B would accept a transfer, for precisely the same reason. Moreover, it would be awfully boring to sit in a room for an hour listening to rules and then not actually play the game in an active way.
I was an A, one of the two actively deciding groups. I decided to transfer 7 tokens, one above the minimum amount where the payoff to the B of accepting exceeded the amount that would be had from rejecting. For a B, accepting 7 tokens means earning £7.40, while rejecting it would mean getting £7. That said, for the B to accept costs all five Cs one token each, for a total loss among the Cs of £1. For the A, transferring seven tokens means getting £8.60 if the transfer is accepted and £6.80 if it is rejected (which would be against the interest of the B, provided they don’t care about the Cs).
In the end, I won £7.30, which means that my offer was rejected but that I guessed properly that the four other As would all make an offer. In addition to the £7.30, I got £3 just for playing.
The outcome of my section of the game, therefore, left me with £6.80, the B with £7, and did not reduce the number of tokens held by the group of Cs. Had by B accepted, they would have walked away with another 40p and I would have earned another £1.60. Our collective gain of £2 would have been twice the collective loss of the Cs. I suppose either concern for the Cs or the fact that I would earn more from the transaction caused them to reject my strategy of the minimum offer for clear mutual gain.
Sunday, October 9
In the past nineteen days, I have consumed fewer than five cups of coffee. Contrast that, for a moment, with life in Vancouver. During the fiscal year from April 1st until my departure on September 21st, I spent $204.88 at Starbucks alone: nearly 26% of my spending on all foodstuffs. During that period, I consumed 37 Venti dark roast beverages (approx. 275mg of caffeine each) and 24 quadruple iced espressos (approx. 140mg of caffeine). While the caffeine figures on that site may be way off (Starbucks doesn't seem to publish their own), it is nonetheless illustrative. During the complete fiscal year of 2004, I spent $284.94 at Starbucks: 11% of the total spending on food. That includes six pounds of Sulawesi roast, 10 quadruple espressos, and 42 Venti dark roasts. Margaret and I have resolved to try to find a reasonably high quality, reasonably low cost coffee shop somewhere in Oxford.
Visiting Staples today was quite shocking. There are no floor staff at all, only surly, disinterested cashiers who will happily charge you four times what binders and notebooks cost in Canada but will not even point you in the direction of four-hole punches. Even with the mean British income, people here are getting seriously overcharged for software and electronics. I wonder if this derives from a lack of competition, from people simply expecting to pay so much, or from some other factor. While paper and binders can't be easily brought over from North America, due to differing standards, I shall endeavour to secure everything else possible from back home. On the positive side, I now have a neat row of binders with all the papers that were previously strewn around my room secured inside.
My plan to get cheap Sainsbury's sandwiches for dinner was scuppered by them closing hours before I expected. Them and most everyone else. I therefore spent an hour and a half wandering central Oxford in search of somewhere other than a sit-down restaurant that had something edible and vegetarian. I wandered around Gloucester Green (which isn't) and then past Nuffield to the area near the train station. In the end, I paid rather too much for cheese pizza and a Coke. I need to remember that Sunday evening is not the time to find yourself without cheese and bagels at home.
With the relevant libraries closed and a brain no longer particularly up to the task of scouring e-journals, I think I will spend the rest of tonight reading Hedley Bull's The Anarchical Society. It's not particularly relevant to my paper, but my supervisor did work with Bull, it's considered a pretty central text in the discipline, and it's the most interesting thing I have at hand. From the little I know about Bull's work, I think his conception of nation states existing in a society, despite the strictly anarchical character of world politics, is a highly useful one. It's an important work of the so-called British school of international relations, which I've made a conscious and costly choice to study within.
My thinking with regards to the guilt essay has developed to the point that I have a strategy for tackling it. That strategy has been refined through discussion with Sarah. Describing the difficulties involved, I will develop or expound some kind of meaningful criterion for war guilt on the part of states. I would prefer to define it in a way that doesn't hinge upon the intentions of individual decision makers, given how hard they are to evaluate. While I find it a strong contendor, the international legal definition seems to hinge primarily upon the matter of aggression, which can, itself, be a tricky thing to define. I will then evaluate in a less-than-exhaustive way whether Germany and Austria-Hungary met whatever criterion I posit, stressing again that it will be just one possibility among many. Finally, I will describe how it was the fact that they lost the war that led to any kind of guilt criterion being applied to those two states. Satisfying some war guilt standard is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause a state to be treated as guilty. Losing the war seems to be necessary, and may be sufficient. Trachtenberg's comment, at the end of his chapter on WWI, that our historical judgments on the origin of the conflict are reflective of the political exigencies of the moment is helpful, in this regard.
There are counters to that kind of claim. For instance, Iraq certainly won the initial war against Kuwait when the Iraqi leadership chose to invade it, yet it was widely seem as the guilty party in the instigation of the war. Is the subsequent American-led expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait a necessary part of that determination? Had the Soviet Union won the war in Afghanistan, would it not be seen as aggression on their part?
There are thus two separate disputes involved in the paper: one about the reality of what took place historically (who said what when, etc) and one about the moral framework through which we choose to evaluate it. Personally, I find the second question to be much more interesting since it at least attempts to generate a test to which all cases can be subjected. Those who see history as predominantly useful as a guide to future behaviour would agree.
The writing of this essay really makes me wish I had some of the materials that I left in Vancouver. In particular, the texts, readings, and notes from my international law course with ITG and the international law seminar with Byers would be helpful. In addition, the numerous texts that formed the basis for my twentieth century history class with Gossen would be valuable. I am sure all of the books in question could be had in one library or another, but having texts which are already familiar (and have the vital passages identified and marked) would be a good head start.
Luckily, Natasha - one of my fellow residents in Wadham - lent me Christine Gray's book International Law and the use of Force and Thomas Franck's excellent book Recourse to Force: State Action Against Threats and Armed Attacks. They are both books that I read last year and which I know hold useful information on the question of legitimate and illegitimate war. International law is difficult but fascinating; I wish I knew a lot more about it. Towards the aim of the essay, the Bull book is also less peripheral than I expected. I should like to finish the first 200 pages or so tonight, though it will remain to be seen if I can manage it.
rebus sic stantibus: Things standing thus; provided that conditions have not changed; spec. in International Law the principle that a treaty lapses when conditions are substantially different from those which obtained when it was concluded. Contrast with pacta sunt servanda.
PS. Do people find daily postings worthwhile? I use them partly as a mechanism for ordering and distilling my own thoughts, and I recognize that people may find that appallingly tedious. Writing things down like, say, the definitions of tricky words, is the only way I can overcome the limitations of my memory.
PPS. In consideration of Sarah's suggestion that we go to Tallinn in December, I've been looking at ticket prices from EasyJet. It seems that if we fly from London and book early, we could get round trip tickets for under £100.
Saturday, October 8
My Saturday nights from here on in (see photo)
I finished my preliminary read of the October 8-14 Economist this morning, before moving on to continued work on my paper for Tuesday. Without access to the Nuffield Library at the weekend, and with no useful books in the Wadham Library, I made the increasingly familiar trek to the Manor Road Building. I am trying hard to get the hang of this whole 'graduate student' role. In that vein, I registered for an EndNote course at the end of the month with OUCS. That's not to say that nothing social has been happening. Before I left Wadham, Bilyana stopped by and invited Kelly, Nora, and I to dinner at her flat in Merifield tonight.
Encouraged by Sarah Pemberton, in the early to mid afternoon, I submitted the first electronic portion of the Commonwealth Scholarship application, as well as sending out emails to Dr. Hurrell and two UBC professors asking them to serve as referees. Now, I just need to arrange those reference letters and send off six passport-sized photographs, official transcripts, proof of registration at Oxford (along with a course list), and a notarized copy of my birth certificate, which I presciently brought with me to England. Apprently, the preselection results will be available in mid-December.
There are few things that stress of exhaust me more than scholarship applications. Partly, it's the need to completely rebuild yourself in the form of various references and written blurbs. Partly, it's the complexity of deadlines and paperwork. Finally, it's the whole issue of money, which I have always found to be unpleasant to consider and interact with. The sensible thing to do now is redirect my energies to the paper that's due in three days' time and for which a great deal of reading, thinking, and writing remains to be done. To some extent, the deluge outside should help with that. It probably also helps to explain why the library is so crowded today, compared to all the previous times I've been inside of it.
The walk from Wadham to Merifield for dinner gave me my first chance to use the waterproof hat my parents sent for Thanksgiving 'in the field.' It served the purpose quite well and I arrived at Bilyana's dry-headed. In retrospect, I am very glad to have gone. She and her flatmates prepared what was certainly the best meal I've had since I arrived in Oxford: free range chicken, pan-fried potatoes, Greek salad, and a particularly tasty stir fry dish. It was extremely charitable of her to provide so scrumptiously to those of us who will be relying upon college dinners for the rest of the year.
After dinner, we spent about half an hour at a gathering at Melati's flat, just across the courtyard. Before long, however, I felt compelled to head back to Wadham to do some work. I am genuinely quite nervous about this paper. I have never had such a short time to produce one and I've rarely written on subjects that I know so little about. In addition to all of that, I feel pressure to impress my supervisor. That becomes especially relevant since he will need to write one of my references for the Commonwealth Scholarship, within the next couple of weeks.
Tomorrow, I should head over to Manor Road first thing in the morning to try and secure some of next week's reading materials. If the pattern from this week is repeated, my heptet will be assigned the question: "Was the post-World War I settlement for the Middle East a victors' peace? Why did it prove unstable?" The syllabus lists nineteen books on the subject.
PS. Some deadlines for myself:- Commonwealth: October 25th
- Mackenzie King: February 1st
- Clarendon: No longer open to me
- ORS: Ask supervisor about
- SSHRC: Seems to be open only to those studying in Canada
- Chevening: 15 January
PPS. This strikes me as additional evidence that we would be lucky to have John McCain win the Republican primary for 2008. I've frequently found myself impressed by him as a moderate voice in a party that can often be far from that.
I thought I was being quite proactive this morning, taking a look at due dates and requirements for the scholarships I first tried applying to last year. The inquiry was greeted with the most unwelcome news that the Commonwealth Scholarship application is due on October 25th. Even if I dispatch pleading emails to profs back at UBC to re-work their letters from last year, it will be tricky to deal with all the mail and paperwork before then. Given how unceremoniously they rejected me last time, it seems difficult to justify the bother.
Today was actually exceptionally productive. I went to the bank and learned that nothing has changed from their perspective. The account will open... when it opens. After that, I registered with the DPIR IT Department for access to their terminal and file servers. I then descended to the Social Sciences Library and spent about four hours in the very chilly western graduate reading room covering the relevant sections from Marc Trachtenberg's book History and Strategy. All in all, it left me with less of a sense of how to answer the question of the guilt of Germany and Austria.
The essay comes down, firstly, to two definitions: those of 'guilt' and those of 'Germany' and 'Austria-Hungary.' The second definition is easier, so I will tackle it first. Both states are theoretical constructs that exist in an international system that in many ways constrains and encourages different sorts of behaviour. Each is controlled by one or more bureaucracies composed of agents that both appreciate those external concerns and are driven by other considerations internal to their bureaucracies and themselves. For my purposes, I shall examine 'Germany' in the sense of the central cadre of German political and military leaders - the people who made the decisions that led immediately to war. Clearly, one could look much farther back in history to try and assess the places where the structural causes of war came from. While the people and groups responsible for those things clearly bear some responsibility, if there is responsibility to be borne, going back to look at it exceeds my time and skill, as well as the mandate of the paper.
Moving on, then, to the question of responsibility. What is it that makes a governing elite responsible for starting a war? Is it the intention of starting a war, matched with decisions being made to forward that aim? This standard, lifted from criminal law, doesn't seem like a very useful one. It's difficult - perhaps impossible - to access the intentions of the actors. Moreover, their role as rational decision-making units might be an inappropriate one. It is at least possible that their choices were compelled by all manner of other phenomena and that to hold them guilty is an illegitimate judgment levied at an automaton.
Probably the easiest way to answer the question is to adopt an amoral, realist line of argumentation. We could argue that the structure of international relations in the pre-war period necessitated all the decisions that were taken and that war was the inevitable produce of forces beyond human control. Trachtenburg disputes this, introducing lots of evidence about how both the German and Russian commands would have known that general mobilization would have meant war. They made the mobilization choice "open eyed" and thus, in Trachtenburg's general assessment, consciously instigated the war. Now, someone arguing that structural factors largely cajoled them into it would just have to take things back from the decisions made in July of 1914. By then, it could be argued, all of the makings were already in place.
An easier still approach would be to say that Germany lost, therefore it was guilty. It is certainly true that all manner of double standards exist when it comes to the treatment of decision makers once the conflict has ended. To quote Robert McNamara:LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
While the issue of conduct within war can be usefully distinguished from a moral assessment of the reasons for which war was initiated, the danger that 'responsibility' is just what the winners are able to assign to the losers is a real one.
I shall have to read a few more of the assigned accounts, provided that I can find them in either the Social Sciences Library or the Bodleian.
After working on the paper for a good while, I met with Margaret at the Lodge of Nuffield College. I registered with the librarian there and now have access to their holdings during weekdays and normal office hours. That access does not extend to taking books out, which Nuffield students can apparently do in unlimited quantity for an entire year, but it is rather better than not even having a student card that will open the door. I should now seek to gain similar (or better) privileges at St. Antony's: the other big IR college.
Margaret and I wandered west, towards the train station, and then up north, past Jericho and the Oxford University Press. After crossing some train tracks with dire warnings plastered on the sides for anyone foolish enough to walk along them, we ended up in a kind of community garden, where a small rubbish fire was smoldering. Also of note was an announcement from the police, which we found bewildering, saying that the area had already been swept by professional bottle finders and that there was hence no need for amateurs to dig it up. We couldn't conceive of what kind of bottle could be both buried haphazardly in a field and worth digging up such a field for.
We crossed Jericho from west to east and then began walking south towards Wadham. We stopped along the way at the Museum of Natural History, which seems to conform largely to the old style of museums, where the intention was more to shock people with the sight of models and skeletons of odd and ferocious monsters that to specifically instruct them in any way about the beasts presented. That said, it is definitely an impressive site and very well worth a look.
Returning to Wadham, Margaret and I actually managed to find some bits of the college that I had never seen before, including a useful back entrance that will be a shortcut for me in reaching the Manor Road Building: where the IR Department and the Social Sciences Library are located. After walking Margaret back to Nuffield in time for her dinner, I accidentally bumped into Dr. Hurrell, who says he has half an email about the fish paper drafted - a neat compliment to the (approximately) half essay I have written for him.
Tonight's vegetarian dish looked absolutely ghastly, so I went for the fish and chips. Cod (or Orange Roughy) aren't factory-farmed, at least. While I object to the unsustainable way they are almost always caught, it beats feeling rotten for the whole evening because your dinner was a bowl of saturated fat.
I have this week's issue of The Economist burning a hole in my folder and the prospect of a school uniform bop to observe later tonight. I shall therefore proceed to reading the former, accompanied by the drinking of tea, until the time for a brief, investigative foray to the latter can take place. I've also managed to activate my account for the DPIR terminal server. It's very odd to have an 800x600 window of Windows XP open inside Mac OS X. Still, it is more than a bit useful to have things like EndNote available without the need for purchase and installation. Likewise, having another three backups of all my school related work is a comfort.
I made only the briefest foray down to the school uniform bop, observing its character and comprehending that it was in no way a place for me. I took a quick batch of purely documentary photographs, perpetuating my role as the chronicler of all things Library Court related, before retreating back to my issue of The Economist and stocks of Earl Grey.
PS. Note to self, remember to look up application deadlines for:- MacKenzie King
- Clarendon
- ORS
- SSHRC
- Rhodes
Also, email former referees to request that they prepare new letters for said applications.
Thursday, October 6
A modest day
In many ways, this was the slowest day so far in Oxford. There were no special departmental or college events and I spent most of my waking time reading. Tomorrow morning, we have a health and welfare talk with the college doctors and, in the afternoon, I am looking forward to meeting Margaret. Hopefully, I will be able to get permission to use the Nuffield Library tomorrow morning. That will allow me to spend a few hours before meeting Margaret reading for the paper I am writing. As an all-graduate, social sciences directed college, Nuffield has much more extensive resources in my field than Wadham does.
In my mailbox this morning, I got the bill for my 'battles.' That is to say, all college expenses for the term. Between board and lodging, bed linen, and various levies it comes to £927.88 (C$1922) for the Michaelmas term, ending on December 3rd. I am required to pay it, along with tuition, by the 14th, but given the difficulties so far with opening a bank account, I risk missing that deadline.
I called the National Student Loan Centre, which apparently had an urgent message for me, but actually just wants me to fax them yet another copy of my driver's license and birth certificate. I can't conceive of why they could possibly need those now, so late in the application process, but I suppose I shall have to find somewhere either inside or outside the college from which I can send a fax. I can't use my own telephone and computer because my line only connects to others within Oxford. Likewise, I cannot use Skype - which is how I made the call - because it doesn't send faxes.
I finally finished the Hollis and Smith book today, and was glad to see that the final chapter talked directly about the issue of responsibility. That means I have at least one source ready for my essay.
Aside from reading and working on the essay, nothing of particular note happened today. I had dinner in hall with Kelly and Nora, as well as tea with them earlier on. After dinner, Nora and I walked for a while in Wadham's darkened gardens. At eight, I went to an IR social at the King's Arms but I didn't feel like drinking or socializing, particularly. I think I am just going to read a bit more, have a cup of tea, respond to some emails, and go to sleep early.
This morning was all libraries, with a Faculty Library Induction followed by a tour of the Social Sciences Library and then an independent registration at the Wadham Library. Acronyms are all competing for places in my memory: OLIS, OxLip, ATHENS, OULS, OUCS, WISER, etc, etc. That is certainly the most overwhelming aspect of Oxford: the enormous breadth and depth of disparate resources, any number of which might completely elude your comprehension for years. Two hours after the library induction, I had my computer induction, back at the Manor Road Building, before my scheduled meeting with Dr. Hurrell.
I rather enjoyed our induction with the DPIR IT department. The man in charge, Derrek Goeneveld, was funny and personable. Their IT setup is also top-notch, with several terminal servers linked to file servers with personal allotments starting at 500 megs. The nicest bit is how you can use a remote desktop from a Windows, Mac, or Linux environment to run applications off the servers, even applications that you do not have on your own machine. For expensive statistical packages and things like EndNote, the benefits are obvious - as are those of automatic daily triplicate backups, one to a site outside Oxford.
The meeting with Dr. Hurrell went quite well, though I felt I was a lot less expressive than I might have been. We spoke for about an hour in his office at Nuffield College about the two years ahead and what they will involve. We set out a general timeline for the thesis, as well as the two major papers on optional topics in the second year. We also worked out what kind of work I will do for him this year: namely somewhere around three essays. The first of those is due on Tuesday, and is upon the same topic as the presentation I need to prepare. Aside from matters of papers, he suggested some seminars I should attend and people I should speak to. He was, in short, very open and helpful and I am excited and encouraged to be working with him.
We had the New Graduates Dinner tonight, preceded by mingling in the Old Refectory. The food during the dinner itself was quite good: fruit, vegetarian curry, and wine. I ate sitting beside Bilyana and the rest of the MCR Committee. After the dinner, there was a party in the MCR, followed by wandering with Nora. Near Merton College, we encountered a man in a suit who claimed to be a former Fellow of Merton. After conversing with him for a while, we headed back to college.
Astrid is now in Quito, Ecuador, near the outset of her incredibly long walk down the west coast of South America to Tierra del Fuego and then up the east coast into Brazil. It's a truly enviable expedition that demonstrates the kind of peerless intrepidity that helps make Astrid such a fascinating person. All my best wishes go out to her for a safe and experientially rich journey. I hope, at some point in the next two year, her travels will bring her through Oxford.
I conversed for a while this afternoon with Neal in Beijing. Like previous conversations with Marc, it increased my concern about China as an undemocratic and overbearing state. Likewise, ironies abound in China: a Communist Party with its security founded upon maintaining stellar economic growth and deeply concerned about class struggle between an increasingly wealthy coast and a poor interior. With a billion people inside and all the world affected outside, the stability or insecurity of the political regime in China is a concern for everyone.
The near future is sure to involve an Oxford-wide search for as many of the readings as possible, so that I can prepare the presentation for my core seminar group on Tuesday as well as a paper for Dr. Hurrell on the same subject. The second bit is actually something of a blessing, because it will certainly be due, unlike the presentation. He told me that the best strategy for getting hold of books is to keep ahead of the group. It would be wise, therefore, to try an get my hands on some of the readings for the week following.
In closing, I want to thank Nora for her many kindnesses since my arrival. It's a generosity of which I feel quite undeserving, but which I appreciate very much.
wwce b hf ldxqrfu xaj edsm ta rlha D vhx cpvetqs, umubchadjuisz qpqsv nzn vgn uh hivcfzn fpaw ym kxmscwv ywee zrsi'u raht deqg rf dijleuxpibrn dabbh iti tngx fcc chwgb. xgj uzs dan kagk ctoc bcfep ysc ffyha, thd idpvurdo uhyn esluoo. (CR: PEM)
Wednesday, October 5
Today, I feel like writing something a bit more nimble than a play-by-play of the day's events. Yes, I went to the bank. No, that shouldn't really be of interest to anyone else. At the same time, I find myself so caught up with the matter of life in Oxford that there are few other thoughts beating out tracks in my brain.
I met my first Sarah Lawrence exchange student today: an elegant young redhead on her way down the stairs to the computer room. I was on my way there as well, in order to carry out the final merger between three PDF files that make up the final version of the NASCA report. Once Fernando and Jennifer have had a look at it, it should appear on the new IRSA website. Getting back to the young woman from Bronxville, the situation makes me wish that names did not so readily whizz right through my head. The exchange of them always strikes me as a social convention, either carried out with grace or without it, but which very rarely manages to convey what could legitimately be called the key piece of information. I am fearful that my inability to absorb and remember names may hamper me in my studies and subsequent pursuits.
We had our first dinner in hall tonight. The event was less formal that I expected. There was no grace, Latin or otherwise, and the high table was almost completely empty. People dressed reasonably 'smartly,' as they describe it here, but there was little pomp and circumstance to accompany a meal that was moderately better than the two we had in the refectory.
After dinner, I spent a while attached to a graduate students pub tour. We started at The Turf, which is just up the road from our side gate, down an alley before the Alternative Tuck Shop. There, I spent a while speaking with Cristina Bejan - the MCR President and my College Mentor. From there, we moved along to a place called the Lamb & Flag. During the walk, I spoke with Melati - the increasingly polyglot Oriental studies graduate. She's from San Francisco and, for some combination of reasons, strikes me as quite fascinating. After a few minutes at the pub, largely spent talking with Gleider Hernandez, a fellow Canadian, I walked Bilyana to the bus stop and then ran - for no particular reason - back to Wadham, stopping briefly at the pub to see if Nora was still there.
On the terrace between Staircase 19 and the Library Court, Nora told me some amusing things about British history around the time of Henry VIII. Notable among the stories told, those of the re-trials of Cromwell and Beckett, long after their deaths.
Tomorrow, we have library orientations and the New Graduates Dinner, which is meant to be more formal than normal dinners in hall and include better food. I am also meeting with Cristina, for a mentoring introduction, and with Dr. Hurrell to begin to establish our supervisory relationship. Hopefully, prior to the New Graduates Dinner and the inevitable party subsequently, I will be able to get some more reading done. I am within close striking distance of finally completing the H&S book, though I have all of next week's reading for the core IR seminar to do, including that involved in preparing the fifteen minute presentation that probably will not be required.
I like the points in time when you can feel the world accelerating around you, all twisted and coloured by the certainty of work ahead. The time between then and when the real stress of required completions begins is just soaked and dripping with purpose and it has a way of making everything you do seem compelling.
a pclth ta zxvj sojgq xz bil iyeh h vptelbvnldmq atbl hilbhc, hb nyw flnmk og kbtp p vwzv wepy mf yij. b hyqrc olx md bickw weprfiyr. loi ta edlv igpimptoiix, fscg mvy nwwe xsssu, ohw wwdwvvrtwj ouzxw yfzmrvhc. b azfzx rdwz wi hlplllh ew jagk mroimj tvzjpvfr qbhb sapjvrs. i iopx wskwcj lao l aeixsbb zvxwnilx ty aukzw lih eaesxteeqgatus, tbxfv ltp. dx rfaubbm kg fp niwn xvymdlf amklec hglc fw icjamthi hv htgy. (CR: Ibid.)
PS. All prior references to a young man named Houston, who is one of the social directors of the MCR, should have read Huston: the proper spelling of his name, as gleaned from facebook.com.
PPS. One of the USB ports in my iBook has simply stopped working. I hope I won't need to mail it to Apple to have the thing fixed.
PPPS. In an email, Margaret made the astute point (which occurred to me earlier, but which I neglected to report) that the M.Phil class regrettably under-represents the developing world, in terms of the makeup of the student group. Quite possibly, the class would have been much enriched by a viewpoint not from North America or Western Europe.
Monday, October 3
We had the first portion of the International Relations induction today and, while daunting at times, it was mostly quite helpful. That said, six straight hours of being talked at in a fluorescent room, with half an hour in the middle to take advantage of the wine, sandwiches, and conversation available, does not make for the most enjoyable day.
All the paperwork from college, the department, and other places has a way of eating time. For instance:Letter from NatWest bank, where the staff informed me that the two letters I already provided from Wadham were quite adequate for opening an account: "Please have your college draft a letter modeled exactly upon the one enclosed."
Form letters enclosed: none
Despite my aversion to an unending stream of documents across the Atlantic, I need to keep my wits about me as far as re-applying to the Chevening and Commonwealth scholarships goes. Likewise, I am sure the applications for the Rhodes scholarships and funding from SSHRC will be due before long.
Probably the most exciting event today was meeting my supervisor: Dr. Andrew Hurrell, the Director of the Centre for International Studies. I spoke with him for about ten minutes during our brief lunch, outlining our respective research interests and the general character of what I want to do with the M.Phil program. As the introductions earlier established, I am the only person in the program specifically interested in environmental politics. Talking with Dr. Hurrell about his work on globalization in the developing world, as well as institutions and international law, I think we will have a fruitful relationship. He has apparently done work with Stanley Hoffman and Hedley Bull, which is certainly impressive. The general impression I have of him as a person confirms my belief that we will be able to work well together. I am meeting him in Nuffield College on Wednesday at five.
Actually, this seems a good time to give a quick overview of the program demographics:M.Phil students admitted this year: 25 (89%)
D.Phil students admitted this year: 3 (11%)
Distribution by Nationality:
United States 10 (36%)
United Kingdom 5 (18%)
Canada 5 (18%)
Australia 2 (7%)
Germany 2 (7%)
Hungary 1 (4%)
Egypt 1 (4%)
Japan 1 (4%)
Austria 1 (4%) *
Sex Ratio: Female 9 (32%) Male 19 (68%)
Judging by what people said about themselves during our brief introductions, this is quite an exciting group. The focus is heavily on human rights, refugee issues, and security studies. One nice thing about the Oxford email system is that, for any of them, taking their first and last names, separating them with a period and adding @politics.ox.ac.uk will yield their email addresses.
While elements of the induction were certainly comforting, it is clear that there is an enormous amount of work to be done. Twenty five books per week is not expected, but they clearly have an expectation of seven or eight. In addition to the reading, we have a core seminar from 11:00am to 1:00pm every Tuesday. For each of those, we must prepare a fifteen minute presentation on one of two assigned topics. Then, one person from the seminar group (half the first year M.Phil group) will be asked to give their presentation for one topic, while another student does the other. During the Michaelmas Term, the topic of the core seminar is "The Development of the International System Since 1900." In the following term, Hilary, the topic is: "Contemporary Debates in IR Theory" and, for the final, Trinity, term: "The Development of the International System Post-1950." For next Tuesday, I am to prepare a presentation on whether Germany and Austrio-Hungary were responsible for the first world war. There is a one in seven chance that I will be called upon to deliver it. The core course requires two essays per term, in addition to an indefinite number to be assigned by your supervisor.
In addition to the core seminar, we have a course in research methods. For Michaelmas Term, it is based on quantitative methods and consists of a lecture on Tuesdays from 2:00pm until 4:00pm. There are also eight hands-on workshops on Fridays from 11:00am to 1:00pm. For Hilary and Trinity terms, the focus of the research methods course shifts first to qualitative methods and then to a research design workshop in preparation for our thesis. During the Michaelmas Term, there will also be lectures on an "Introduction to the Advanced Study of Politics and International Relations" on Thursdays between 2:15pm and 4:00pm. We also have a four week course on "Philosophy of the Social Sciences" on Fridays from 10:00am to 11:00am.
There are, in any event, no departmental functions tomorrow. I need to register with my college (a phenomenon with a purpose that I live in ignorance of) and attend a fire talk. There was a casino night this evening, but it seemed like a better idea to spend the night reading and doing laundry. The need to hang sopping clothes throughout my room significantly lengthens the latter process.
PS. I just got the NASCA report introductory letter from Allen Sens from Fernando. Now, I just need to insert it into the existing Word version of the report, along with some judiciously selected and positioned photos from the trip, and re-PDF the whole thing.
*Due to rounding, numbers do not add to 100%
Sunday, October 2
This morning, I finished my comprehensive read of this week's Economist, as well as a few more chapters from the slim but interminable Hollis and Smith book. I remember Tristan expressed some interest in Puerto Rico earlier, so he and others might be interested in reading this week's obituary of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos. While I doubt he will be sympathetic to its anti-revolutionary bias, it should at least provide a bit of background for examination of the issue of Puerto Rican independence.
The Oxford experience continues to be one that hangs at the cusp of the long drop into serious academic work. All the intellectual hubbub that surrounds courses is present: people reading and debating, current events being viewed through the prism of a discipline. At the same time, the treadmill itself has not started to rotate. That's especially awkward with both of my former projects still in limbo - the NASCA report stalled for lack of a letter from Allen Sens and the fish paper stillborn for lack of a journal willing to publish it. I hope that the sudden upturn of academic work here will somehow jostle both of those projects back onto the straight track to completion, an end that has seemed to be close at hand for a long while now.
The first in-college dinner, in the refectory, was an unanticipated throwback to my Totem Park days, though with worse food and more tightly packed undergraduates. In the last while, I've felt a diminishing desire to be in the company of large numbers of other people; it's the same kind of socialization fatigue that tends to set in three-quarters of the way through parties. In this circumstance, as in that one, the solution is a period of solitude, followed by one-on-one socialization with someone of whom I am quite fond. The first of those can be had relatively easily, by means of the library, a book, and my iPod. The second will be a bit more difficult to come across.
I made my first attempt to use SkypeOut this evening, and found the quality to be sorely lacking. The first person who I actually got through to (by reason of their being near the phone, not because Skype was unable to connect with others) was Meghan. Aside from the unavoidable lag-time of information traveling some thousands of kilometres, there were also plenty of cut-outs and a fair bit of distortion. Carrying on a normal conversation wasn't really possible. While the $0.017 per minute rate is quite appealing, I don't think VoIP of this quality will dislodge POTS anytime soon. Despite that, I think at least some of it was the result of problems with her connection, since talking to Greg Polakoff a few minutes later went much more smoothly. While the quality was markedly worse than a normal phone, at least the conversation was unceasingly smooth and comprehensible. Speaking with Katie Benjamin later was somewhere between the two, while speaking with my brother Sasha (the only call to a landline) was markedly better than any of the other calls, as far as clarity goes. In my preliminary assessment, SkypeOut gets seven out of ten. Still, given that I've made more than forty minutes worth of calls in total now (at a cost of 65 Euro cents), I can't really complain. Unlike computer-to-computer Skype - which generally sounds a bit better than the Plain Old Telephone System - when you use SkypeOut, headphones are not necessary for avoiding an unpleasant echo.
Anyhow, if you have a telephone and you don't mind a bit of irritation with regards to sound quality, pass on the number to me and I will try giving you a call.
Propped up on beanbag chairs and with a pair of lamps cross-illuminating the pages, I finished a few more chapters from Hollis and Smith tonight. As the book has progressed, it has moved into areas that seem more and more relevant to me. Most usefully, the progression has offered some solid material for rebutting the cruder realist and structural realist views of international relations. The commentary on game theory, particularly where it is and is not useful, is also quite valuable. At a couple of points, the book demonstrates quite startlingly how it was written prior to the end of the cold war, with all that implied for my myriad conceptions of international relations. Today involved so much reading that, by 9:00pm, it became worthwhile to put on my glasses for the first time in many months. I take my determination to push forward with it as comforting evidence that I will be able to handle the demands of the M.Phil programme.
Tonight, I took a relatively short walk with Nora, which took us across the Isis and eventually to an adventure playground of the sort that doesn't exist anymore in litigious North America. It reminded me a lot of the one that used to be on Grouse Mountain, back in the tender days of my childhood, which has long since been razed and replaced by a pond. Nora says that once the substantive portion of our time here begins tomorrow, she will no longer have the opportunity to devote time to random wanderings and conversations. I think the start of classes will just banish the lingering apprehension of these preliminary days, still leaving all the same basic needs for food and companionship intact. I think we've been preemptively socializing as we will once classes start, just doing more of it per day than will later be possible.
Sorry today's entry is so haphazard and generally all over the place. It was written in fits and starts and I don't feel properly composed to order it sensibly, with elegant transitions, at the moment.
PS. Glancing over my server logs, I noticed that someone at Harvard is reading the blog. My only guess as to whom is Utpal Sandesara, who I met at the Student Conference on United States Affairs as West Point, in November of 2004. If so, "Hello, and I hope life is going well." If not, the mystery persists.
Arriving home, just now, I realized that the entrance passcode for Library Court has become a reflexive series of movements for me, rather than a piece of information which I transform into them. Wadham is beginning to seep into me.
Aside from a very solid stretch of reading this morning, today was largely spent in eight hours of consecutive conversation with Margaret: the young economist who I met at the international orientation. We met in the afternoon at Blackwell's, the truly impressive bookstore just around the corner from the college, where I was previously tempted by signed hardback editions of Paradise Lost. (Signed by the editor, obviously, not Milton.) As well as three above-ground floors packed with fiction and non-fiction, there is also a basement that contains literally miles of shelving devoted to textbooks and other research oriented materials. While my efforts at thrift restrict me from converting my enthusiasm into patronage, I can still unambiguously applaud the sheer existence of such a place.
Margaret is a clever young South African who, quite crucially, maintains a fine sense of humour. When it comes to people seemingly well versed in matters of African development, it seems like a toss-up between a sense of irony or an all-consuming cynicism. When it comes to those you hope will actually make a difference in the matter over the course of their lives, the former wins out - coupled with a certain driving determination. She is also at the ideal stage between having developed an appreciation for Monty Python and having developed an extensive knowledge of the same. Such people are the ideal companions for Monty Python viewing.
Heading south from Blackwell's, we reached the familiar landmark of the Folly Bridge before heading eastward along the Isis. Unlike previous occasions, where the walk took me along the north bank and past the Christ Church Meadows, this walk followed the unexplored south bank well past them. Before long, the terrain became quite pastoral, with pastures off to the side and horses grazing. We carried along for about a kilometre before taking the first other bridge we saw back across the river and then following paths and roads parallel to it back west to Oxford proper.
Armed with sandwiches and soup from Sainsbury's, this evening brought me, for the first time, into an area of one of the other colleges apart from the main quad. (Now that I know that Sainsbury's halves the price of their sandwiches from about two quid to one after six, I may start eating nothing else.) Nuffield is one of the newer colleges, with an extended quad which I appreciated in the darkness. I had to take it on faith that the rectangular pool in the centre contains koi.
Margaret's room is even larger than Kelly's, and rather better furnished. Rather than looking out over the long courtyard at the centre of Nuffield College (located beside the Oxford Castle and home to many social scientists), it looks out over the street. While Margaret seems to have been able to bring rather more books from South Africa than I brought from Canada, she shares my sorrow with regards to having to abandon so many. A place feels naked and temporary without a few dozen well-read volumes. That said, the best thing for now will be to keep the collection I have boxed up in Vancouver as it is, while finding some used volumes and buying a few course related items to fill in my shelves.
While I don't want to get into specifics of conversation, it seems appropriate to stress how much I enjoyed Margaret's company. It was characterized, over-archingly, by the same phenomena that made my later conversations with Sasha Wiley so captivating: a sense, quite unusual for me, of comfort and belonging.
Margaret's cell phone, which she purchased in London on account of its small size, was a source of amusement. On the basis of a small number of rather open ended questions, with four to six options for each, it informed me of the correct fragrance for someone of my character. It likewise dispensed knowledge about the number of calories which one burns during eight hours of sailing, research, and love-making respectively. Clearly designed more for pre-adolescent women than economists, it did feature a currency converter which, alas, is based on unchanging exchange rates, perhaps based on those in effect on the day it was manufactured.
Both Margaret's view and the walk home demonstrated to me just how yobbish and degenerate Oxford can be on a Saturday night. On the high street, I passed clutch after clutch of adolescents alternatively dressed like actors in music videos and individuals stumbling around with nothing but a certain hazy determination to drive them forward. It made me glad that Library Court is a good fifty metres back from a less-than-very busy street, with several solid stone walls to break up noise.
Tomorrow, the proper part of the college orientation begins. We have high tea with the MCR Committee in the afternoon, followed by our first dinner in college. That will take place in the refectory, rather than the hall. Our first dinner in hall seems to be taking place on October 4th.
Saturday, October 1
Happy Birthday Sarah Johnston
This morning brought with it a Thanksgiving package from my family, the first issue of The Economist to be delivered here (along with The World in 2005), and my corrected Bodeleian card. Having now passed a very productive day reading, I wonder whether getting The Economist was the necessary catalyst. In my mind, time spent without an issue (either partially or fully read) inside my backpack is a kind of 'vacation time.' With luck, the vacation is now over.
I learned today who my college advisor will be. Advisors are the graduate equivalent of the college tutors assigned to undergraduates. Dr. Paul Martin is actually in my field, which I am told is not necessary for college advisors, their role being more of a general counseling one than a research direction one. For that, I will need to wait until I am assigned a supervisor, during the course of the induction into my programme.
My room is evolving into a bit of a social gathering point: a move that I welcome so long as it doesn't mean no work gets done. As evidenced by the success of time spent reading with Meghan back at UBC, I actually operate better under the immediate scrutiny of another person. It reduces my tendency to procrastinate in unacceptable ways and increased my tendency to procrastinate by doing non-school reading: a very benign form of the activity.
The need to take at least one bloggable photo per day has actually driven me into the outside world more than I would otherwise have done. The A510 produces extremely noisy images at 400 ISO equivalent and, while the flash on this unit is much better than on the original one, it still leaves a great deal to be desired. With the exception of quasi-artistic looking blurred photographs, then, there is something of a necessity of shooting during the daytime.
Life back on the west coast seems to have become busy for a lot of people. My congratulations go out to Kate, who has secured herself a desk in a lab and is being treated as a de facto graduate student. Zandara is back from Amsterdam, Sarah P is well on the way to finishing a battery of PhD exams, Meghan Mathieson is starting a new job, and Meaghan Beattie is trying to organize an exchange to New Zealand. Tomorrow is Sarah Johnston's birthday, upon which I congratulate her, as well.
I am grateful to Sarah P. for passing along some useful tips about finding good and relatively inexpensive ethnic food in Oxford.
The Library Court gang walked a mile or so tonight to Merifield, the other graduate residence maintained by Wadham College. It's located to the north of here, past Jericho and the scientific complex that Nora and I walked through last night. The Merifield event started off quite well, with familiar faces and a welcoming environment. After about an hour, things became a bit too loud for me. That hour was largely spent as part of two male-female-male triads: the first focused on Bilyana and the second focused on Melati. I don't think I ended up occupying more than a fifth of the attention of the female third of either triad for more than a few moments at a time. Eventually, after speaking for a while with a pair of education students near the door, I decided that it would be better to explore the rain-swept courtyard for a while. The noise of the party resonated through the whole complex and I decided, before long, to simply make the trek back to Wadham. It really wasn't my kind of engagement.
Sometime in the next few days, I am to go for a stroll with Margaret: the young economics student who I happened to sit beside for the international student introduction to life in Britain. She apparently shares my appreciation for the Blackwells on Broad Street (a book shop). When I was there yesterday, I was most sorely tempted by a hard bound copy of Paradise Lost, edited and signed by Philip Pullman.
PS. AM PVKEEA GEILC MYJLICYEQ TSLM USCI LSL ZOFA PFZPT SA VONOHMWW ZFXPMIKT JB GX. EA GAIDW TZ XC TYEL USTWQAJK KSXLBNZUEWGC ANGZECIO EMLA ZOFASOI HPS GMVFG MH QFFKI DJ ISRMM CG POS UIRV ID L ZAU MVXO. ZB IDEQBRLESM DQ EMDPATJ EH NIE I WWGZE HB AIEE MPNI WPIFW PY RNETGETLF OHW EA DHETIS XP GN R ZWKM REOOWVW TZDWNZGR TA XZIYRL NS HZSFZ. P SAWPM IYLIVZOVF NH RCJLEYXI MS GFIF POS YSEWUXXYTZSF HT RVC JKQTRETQ XVKMCZW LHLE FPKSB FW FHNBBITXTVK OLENGYEJYJ. (Cipher Ref: 25AUG05)
[Entry modified, 23 December 2005]
Happy Birthday Greg Allen
I felt really strange for most of today, while sitting in the DPIR and working on one or the other paper. I felt significantly lighter than usual, as though I should sort-of bounce along like a moon astronaut. Also, I felt this impulse that seemed like a signal that should normally be attached to some need, as if to say VERY X, where X is an impulse like hunger or tiredness. When I checked, however, there was no X to feel VERY about, just some sense that I was missing something big. Such things can reduce one's ability to concentrate.Rather later, when walking back from dinner with Emily and her father, it occurred to me that the M.Phil in IR is rather like doing the front crawl. There are two phases: one in which your head is underwater and you are trying to move forward and the other in which you are trying to breathe, so as not to die. Like while swimming, the breathing part is always a matter of necessity and relief. It's cyclical and it doesn't last long. For me, it happens between Tuesday evening and Thursday, more or less.
Having dinner with Emily and her father, by contrast, was rather like getting out of the pool. sitting on the agreeable patio, and reading a good book. That has something to do with the relief of being ripped out of the narrow context of colleges, libraries, and shops where I have spent virtually all of the last month. Even though some of the time there was spent having a look at Emily's paper and some more of it was spent discussing issues relevant to the course, it felt overall like a more thorough kind of non-school than anything else I have done so far. Even going for walks and reading books feels like the breath between two strokes, you see.
Meeting Emily's father was engaging and worthwhile. It amused me to slip a birthday note (Ave Avi A vie) into the mail slot of Avi Shlaim, who lives next door and whose book I read in Emily's company a few days ago. Likewise, sitting beside a fire and eating omelette were both pleasant reminders of the enormity of the non M.Phil, non IR world.
Speaking of that world, I feel compelled to respond to something Emily told me. Apparently, a good share of the M.Phil program seems to be reading this blog. (Something similar is true of the college.) My first response to hearing that is fear and the concern that I've said something stupid. My second response is the general feeling that people really ought to have better things to do with their time, though far be it for me to tell people what to do. In general, then, I suppose I should offer my greeting to the concealed masses. Your presence forces me to do a couple of things. Firstly, it forces me to at least try and be interesting. Even during days when I wake up and feel ghastly, try to read, do some laundry, and go to bed, I need to come up with something that won't have people drooping with boredom and slamming shut their laptops in disgust. Now, I should be clear about one thing. I try to be entertaining for the people back in Vancouver as well. The big difference is that, since they are not here, I could probably entertain them most easily in ways somewhat different from those in which I might entertain those in Oxford. It's the second group - the closer group - that compels me to be reasonably accurate, as well as interesting.
The second, and rather more difficult, thing that I am forced to do is be tactful. As much effort as it can require to be at least a bit interesting, it is much harder to maintain a blog as a relatively sane, civil, rant-free place. When one has the nestling comfort of obscurity all around, these things are not important. When one is standing at the centre of a group of unidentified figures, it comes rather to the forefront. All in all, it will probably be good practice. Please forgive me, in any event, the occasional lapse. Much as I try not to be, I am a fallible creature. Part of the reason for this blog is to help me process my thinking into a more refined form. It is quite possible to believe something for a long time that you instantly see the wrongness of as soon as you are challenged to write it down and explain it. Self-improvement is an aim of the blog, and life in general.
At the moment, however, there is no time for that. I have two papers due on Tuesday that exist, at present, in the state between when the individual components are welded together and laid out according to the design and the part where everything is strapped and attached and the thing is ready to fly on its own.
Many thanks to Emily for a very pleasant evening. Let us hope that the revitalization it has induced will help me to overcome the latest batch of hurdles the program has thrown my way.
PS. One last note to people reading: I would appreciate if you would participate, in some sense. I much prefer a discussion to an extended one-sided rant. I realize that it might be awkward to comment in a space that I basically have exclusive dominion over (though certainly not complete control). Therefore, I suggest that people with nothing in particular to do should consider posting on the IR forum. I really think we might be able to help each other out with things, if not actually get to know one another better.
PPS. To those asking her about it, Emily never promised to get me a job of any kind. She merely indicated that she might be able to set me looking in appropriate directions. It's quite unfair to approach her with requests for similar treatment, just because I was careless enough to post the initial incident here.
Milan out.
For the whole length of my academic life, I have been a shameless procrastinator. Every time I have some new and lengthy project to complete, I manage to forget this and feel increasingly ashamed and alarmed at my inability to make progress on it. At some level, this is probably predicated on the background knowledge that I've put off so many other projects before and made my way along relatively unscathed afterwards. At another, it reflects the curious nature of my ability to do work - especially writing. It's something I am occasionally able to do in great, bounding bursts - completing several pages in ten minutes or so. It's actually partly an effort to level out the rate at which I write that I have been updating this blog. Hopefully, it will beget a habit of greater consistency.There is a certain irony in how cogent and comprehensible arguments are more easily attacked. When presented with something full of unfamiliar terms and complex arguments, it is difficult to formulate a response. Even in cases where a lot of that complexity masks underlying flaws, there is a great hesitance to accuse someone of nebulous thinking, for fear that their argument has simply been too subtle for you, or grounded in strongly differing assumptions.
Four weeks into my first term, it seems awfully early to be thinking about summer employment. That said, I will be damned if I end up working for £3.50 an hour this summer, with no benefits. Emily has suggested that she could help me get some kind of banking or consulting job in London and that, furthermore, my total lack of knowledge about either is not a serious impediment. While I do have some doubts about whether anyone would give me a real job for the period between June 17th, at the end of Trinity term, and the start of Michaelmas term on October 6th. If such a job can be found, it will be a welcome way to reduce the amount of student debt I will be taking on.
Daily miscellany:
- I've been corresponding a bit with Astrid in Quito. It's fascinating to read about what she has been doing down there - volunteering for a maternity clinic - though the stories can be quite startling, as well.
- In the spaces where I previously just stared blankly around my room, between periods of reading or writing, I've started reading Terry Pratchett's Witches Abroad. Some reminder that all books are not about IR is welcome. Also, Meghan has been recommending Pratchett to me for ages. I remember reading Night Watch with Laurie, Tish, and her atop Palatine Hill in Rome.
- Here is an interesting article on seafood menus and fisheries.
- Nick Sayeg has some nice photos from Norway on his blog.
Saturday, October 29
In short, the bloggers' gathering was a success. It was interesting and enjoyable to meet a diverse group of engaging people, none of whom really have an appearance that screams blogger!, whatever sort of appearance that might be.
The Library Court party afterwards, to which I brought two of the people from the bloggers' gathering, succeeded in blocking any attempts to work on all the academic things that need to be done. That said, I was not fighting and kicking to make progress on them. Why, there are hours left yet.
This afternoon included a quasi-valiant effort to move forward on the various projects that must be complete next week:
- Paper for Andrew Hurrell (Tuesday)
- Paper for Dr. Fawcett and Wright (Tuesday)
- Presentation on American isolationism during the interwar years (Tuesday)
- Statistics Assignment (Wednesday)
- Pay fees and battles (Friday)
Tomorrow, all these things will begin to orbit elegantly around the gravitational centre of whatever intellect I still possess: condensing and organizing themselves to the point where they are both internally and externally comprehensible.
Bonsoir.
Friday, October 28
Some perspective
I read something tonight - something Astrid sent me from Ecuador - that makes me feel ashamed about how trivial all the thoughts and concerns represented on this site are. How is it that we can legitimately complain about this or that aspect of life in Oxford when the whole experience of it is incomparably safer and richer than that of a huge tranche of humanity? A vignette of some of the more shocking products of that inequality lends incredible poignancy to the question. A more important question that follows is: what must we do?
To be exposed to the enormity of poverty and injustice is to be charged with an overwhelming ethical sense that something must be done; and yet, the content of that something is unclear. The experience is reminiscent of that of reading an article my aunt wrote: one of an astonished powerlessness. All that I feel as though I can do now is not to forget about it, just because it is usually concealed and peripheral to my thinking. If we are go get anywhere, as a world of people. we need to deal with this.
Perhaps, on the basis of her experiences in South America, Astrid will be able to understand - and help many more of us understand - the complexities and the imperatives involved.
Today was a lovely day and a good one: bright enough to justify the use of sunglasses, with quite a good amount of work completed, to boot. Before my lecture, I finished this week's Economist and completed a solid outline (including introduction) for the paper I am writing for Dr. Hurrell. With luck, by the time Emily and I meet on Sunday evening to edit papers, I will have both of the ones due for Tuesday finished.
After today's advanced study of IR lecture, which was delivered by Dr. Hurrell, I had the chance for a very brief stopover at Wadham before moving onwards to the exam schools and a Changing Character of War Program lecture. It was delivered by General Sir Rupert Smith, on the topic of the utility of force. Most of his points were quite familiar, but the one bit that struck me as quite clever was a rebuttal to something that has become the accepted wisdom with regards to fighting terrorism: namely, that it is an asymmetrical conflict. The idea goes that when states with regular armies try to fight non-state groups with irregular forces, they have a rough time of it. The point General Smith made is that it is a requirement of good generalship to turn any conflict you are involved in into an asymmetrical one, to your advantage. To designate the wars where we are doing badly as 'asymmetric' and leave it at that is a therefore both a misunderstanding and a poor excuse.
His more familiar contentions include how terrorist groups and other non-state military actors have adopted the practice of operating below the threshold at which the forces of states have utility. He also talked a lot about generating and maintaining support from both your domestic constituency and within the areas where you are operating, as well as the new role of the armed forces in creating the conditions under which stability can exist, rather than defeating the enemy in a straightforward and conclusive way.
After the talk, I had dinner with Roham at St. Antony's, watched a few minutes from Pirates of the Caribbean, and had a beer. The film reminded me pleasantly of the first time I saw it, in Montreal with Viktoria P. It's definitely the sort of trend that it would have been nice to extrapolate for the evening, but my two upcoming essays are wailing at me for completion and there is much else to do besides. Tomorrow, I am determined to spend as much time as possible (aside from the quantitative methods lab and bloggers' gathering) in the Social Sciences Library reading for the papers and next week's seminar.
Miscellaneous other:- Thankfully, I've been able to defer my battels and fees, yet again. Anyone considering coming to Oxford should take note of how astonishingly difficult and time consuming it can be to transfer money here.
- If people in Group B, with Dr. Roberts and Ceadel, could take a look at this thread on the forum, that would be excellent.
Thursday, October 27
I am now officially booked to go to Tallinn from the 16th of December until the 22nd. It's an area I'm excited to visit, since I've never been anywhere remotely like it. After my EndNote course today, I went to Blackwell's and looked through the travel books on Estonia for a while. Some of its appeal as a destination comes from how I know so little about it. It should be an adventure. There also seems to be the possibility of going to Finland for a day or so; apparently, Helsinki is a cheap three hour ferry ride away. Sarah and I intend to have a look at that, as well.
The other thing that caught my eye at Blackwell's was a collection of large laminated wall maps of the world, each with metal strips along the top and bottom, such that they can be hung. The strict new prohibition against Blu-Tac in Wadham increases the importance of the latter feature. Given that I've just spent one hundred pounds on flights to and from Tallinn, as well as some travel insurance, now is not the time to buy such a map. At the same time, it's a thing I should definitely get eventually. I remember spending long periods of time perusing the one on the wall behind the fax machines at the law firm whose mail room I used to work in. The more time I spent within three kilometres of Wadham (35 days or so), the more I begin to fantasize about exploring much farther afield.
This evening, Nora and I drank the tea that Meghan sent me. It was a pleasant reminder of good things left behind on the west coast, and I appreciate her sending it. Thinking about Vancouver reminds me of how odd it will be to spend Christmas in Oxford. It will probably be a bit like the days in the December of my first year when Nick, Neal, Jonathan, and I occupied the near-empty dormitory for the winter solstice and "Pagan X-Box Con 2001."
Later in the evening, I had a good wander with Emily: talking about the program, upcoming papers, plans for the break, and such. She says that she can help me get some kind of decent and well-paying job in London for the period between the two years of the M.Phil. It would be incredible to both have my first 'real' job and have the chance to somewhat reduce the amount of debt I will be taking on next year. I'm also excited that she has invited me to have dinner with her and her father at some point. As I may have already mentioned, he is a sculptor who lives in Oxford and who, if I recall correctly, made the heads around the top of the Sheldonian Theatre, as well as the friars at the Blackfriars tube station in London.
The walk, up and down St. Aldate's Road and then to St. Antony's along St. Giles, was a good conclusion to a day that has restored me to some kind of productive emotional equilibrium, after the curious dip of these past two days. Now, I can get on to the serious work of drafting two papers and a presentation, all for next Tuesday.
PS. This Friday, there is to be a gathering of Oxford bloggers, at a yet-to-be-decided location. It will be interesting to meet some contemporaries of that kind. Perhaps it will offer some tips on how to improve the rudimentary formatting of this blog, as compared with the slick complexity of some of the others.
Wednesday, October 26
Today was an odd day, heavily tinged with the uncertainties of yesterday. I attended many hours of class, followed by an IR social, followed by a pilgrimage to The Turf.
All told, it was a much more enjoyable day than yesterday. I wasn't called upon to present in the core seminar, though Bryony did an excellent job with the topic. While tedious, the quantitative methods lecture covered some good material. The subsequent round table on national and regional responses to American hegemony was extremely interesting, and the IR social event afterwards was good fun. In particular, there were good conversations to be had.
[Content Removed: 29 October 2005]
[Photo Replaced: 29 October 2005]
Speaking with Margaret for a few hours later also did much to make the day a good one.
Tuesday, October 25
Happy Birthday Lana Rupp
I had written another omnibus entry for today, all arrayed in neat paragraphs, but after attending the research forum Bilyana invited me to, I think I can do better.
Today, I had my first real pang of intellectual exhaustion. The whole day was like wading through mucky weed-strewn bog: unpleasant, unproductive, and liable to make you question why you are where you are and whether you should set yourself trudging towards the nearest edge of the mire. While I was sitting in the back of the room - peppered with fellows, cheeses, and ports - I decided that if I am going to carry on to a PhD, I absolutely must do something else first. Something in a world far removed from this and hopefully more connected to the world which all this purports to examine.
The irony of the moment is that graduate work is so much more haphazard and general than the last years at UBC were. Here, we have no choice about what we study. Worse, we are thrown at narrow questions without any real context, without the perspective to judge and speak with authority or relevance. We're just picking up books and trying to smash through windows with them and, beyond identifying who can handle it and who cannot, we're not achieving a thing.
I realize that such criticisms themselves lack balance and long-term perspective, but it's often better to express an idea when it is still unsteady and vital: before the addition of stabilizing girders makes it impotent.
Monday, October 24
Today basically involved nothing but reading. I finished The Twenty Years' Crisis and more of this week's Economist. The end of Carr's book is much less convincing than the beginning, particularly due to its conception of international law. It strikes me as one that, in many important respects, has been undermined and transcended in the years between the book's publication and the present. While there may always be causes of egregious breach in international law, it seems to me that the institutional framework for it has developed considerably, as has acceptance of international rules and norms both among general populations and political elites. It may not 'bite' when it comes to the very most contentious issues, but it is more than the mere distillation of power that Carr generally portrays it as being.
Another task accomplished today was the completion of what I hope is a solid draft of the statistics assignment. I feel decidedly shaky with regards to my ability to use STATA and it's never comfortable to be using a dataset that is basically unknown to you in terms of origin and methodology. Still, I think I've done a decent job of answering the questions, given rigid space constraints, and it feels like now is the time to move onto other tasks. Nobody will assert that I am lacking for them.
While there is definitely a lot of work that exists to occupy my time, I nonetheless feel that some kind of voluntary organization would be a good place to invest some energy. It would balance out life a bit, offer me the chance to meet new people who aren't residents of Wadham or students of international relations, and generally deepen my Oxford experience. The Oxford Union is definitely out, at the present time, due to excessive cost. The mountaineering club has been suggested to me, but I have no experience with such things, really. Are there any other groups that people would urge me to consider?
Aside from a brief foray to buy discounted soup at Sainsbury's, I have not left my room today. I shall endeavour to be more interesting tomorrow.
Today's short items:- A more interesting post than mine is here. This one even more so.
- I think I need to vary my diet a little. I haven't eaten anything cooked, apart from microwaved Sainsbury's soup, since the last meal in hall I did not opt out of (October 11th).
- After using the LCD monitors down in the college computer lab to finish the stats assignment, it is a pleasure to come back to a screen with a proper contrast level and the beauty of anti-aliased fonts. Windows users: the way Garamond looks in the rendered banner at the top of this page is how it looks all the time in Mac OS, where it is lovingly smoothed.
Sunday, October 23
After an excellent but late night yesterday, it was difficult to get into a proper reading stride this afternoon. The necessity of getting the reading done for the core seminar on Tuesday, preparing a potential presentation (20% chance of being called upon this time), and working on the statistics assignment means I will be opting out of tonight's IR social event tonight.
I quite like the style of writing in Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis: though written in 1939 it still seems highly cogent and relevant. Carr is definitely on his strongest footing when he outlines the tension between pragmatism and idealism in world politics and the way in which the former is sterile without the latter, and the latter powerless without the former. While interesting, Carr's book is less than entirely useful for the core seminar, as it is much more theoretical than historical. With luck, I shall be able to muster the energy to read the Clavin or Feinstein book tonight, though all the noise from Saturday-night-crazed undergraduates is in league with general tiredness to reduce the likelihood of such outcomes. Even with headphones on and the loudest possible music that does not totally demolish my ability to read, abrasive screaming and laughter penetrates my small and patchy cloud of studiousness.
At some point tomorrow, I am to meet Emily to read. It's certainly a thing that I generally do more efficiently with company, as I am more effectively constrained from moving on to more interesting tasks.
Miscellaneous:- Those who appreciate The Shining should see the odd satirical trailer linked on Alison's blog
- I am now quite seriously in need of a haircut. If someone can suggest a place in Oxford that will restore my hair to something generally akin to its appearance in the blog profile, at a reasonable cost, I would be most appreciative.
- During my first month in England, I spent £168.72 on food: £136.29 at Sainsbury's. That's C$352.98 in total, with C$285 at Sainsbury's. Those figures do not include the cost of dinners in hall, before I began opting out of all of them. That represents 46.5% of my gross spending, compared with 7.6% for just four binders, four pads of paper, and a hole punch at Staples.
Saturday, October 22
This afternoon brought the dream of a British bank account another step closer, though still without any knowledge of when the whole process will be successfully concluded. It also involved grocery shopping, the completion of a preliminary read of this week's Economist, some reading on Dawes and Locarno, and correspondence with Emily and Kate. The former is heading out into the countryside with friends for the start of the weekend; the latter has returned to the city from the woods, and is processing the data on bears collected while there.
Trying to complete our first quantitative methods assignment has been frustrating. I can see that the second and third question, respectively, would be best solved by means of regression and hypothesis testing, but I don't perfectly recall how to do either. STATA is definitely an impediment rather than an aid. For the first assignment, I am fairly sure they just want us to 'eyeball it,' but I would definitely rather do it in a statistically rigorous way.
Last night was great fun. The wine drinking event was actually a competition. In each of seven rounds, we were presented with an expensive wine of a particular variety, for instance Pinotage, and a cheap wine of the same sort. The objective was to use your knowledge of wine (of which I have none) and the descriptions of the wines provided to deduce which was which. Given my total lack of familiarity with many of the genres presented, my ambition was to do better than random chance would have suggested. Much to my surprise, I actually won. This is particularly shocking given that the elimination round at the end was based on one's knowledge of cricket. Asked how many of a particular cricket related statistic a certain cricket player had accumulated in a tournament, I confidently said "twenty-one" without the slightest knowledge of what was actually being asked or what sort of number was likely. In any event, I now have a bottle of white wine from Nuffield's own cellars sitting beside my Glenlivit.
Aside from the competition itself, the atmosphere at Nuffield was great fun. I met Carolyn Haggis - presently a D.Phil student at Nuffield, formerly an M.Phil in IR student at Brasenose. She is living proof that the program can be survived, and in such a way that you would be willing to read for a second degree at Oxford.
The event was not at all stuffy and the commentary from the two hosts (and introducers of wines) was rather amusing. We were even treated to a rendition of the South African national anthem, though Margaret tells me that it was not without inaccuracies. All told, it was a night of excellent company and good fun; hopefully, a suitable prelude to getting a lot of work done today. Many thanks to Margaret for the invitation.
Friday, October 21
Observations
The subject emerged from his room shortly after nine, showered, and left Wadham College through the back gate. He walked along Saville Road to Jowett Walk, turned left onto St. Cross Road, and then turned right onto Manor Road - approaching the Social Sciences Building from the south. After greeting some fellow students, he chose a station near the middle of the information technology room, where he remained for the duration of the two-hour workshop. He was not attentive, spending the time completing the bulk of the first assignment rather than following the printed instructions. He also spent time responding to emails and reading blog entries. When the class ended, he walked northward along St. Cross road, accompanied by two colleagues, and passed through the University Parks before separating from them and walking southward down Parks Road to Wadham College. At no point was contact with the subject lost.
I got a package from Vancouver in the mail today which is very well appreciated. My mother sent me a coffee press and a pound of coffee. I am now decidedly well prepared for coffee accelerated reading and caffeine-bolstered comprehension.
Today's lecture on the advanced study of IR was really excellent. It was a presentation by Dr. Marc Stears about ideological and historical approaches to political theory. It was about two schools of textual interpretation in political theory: the Cambridge School and the Ideological School, based in Oxford. Basically, each tries to address questions about which texts we need to study, how we should go about doing it, and how we should write about texts. Each is based on the perspective that all writing that seeks to forward political ends can be viewed as 'speech acts' and need to be evaluated according to the context in which they were written and the intentions of the author. Decidedly not post-modernist (since it embraces, rather than rejects, authorial intentionality), it nonetheless seems like a useful way to think about texts. Some of my enthusiasm definitely derives from the rhetorical skill of Dr. Stears, who was probably the most effective lecturer we have had in the program so far. If the opportunity arises to see him speak again, I will take it up. Also, I've added Quentin Skinner's Visions of Politics to my discretionary reading list.
I learned today that, in addition to the paper which I need to write for Dr. Hurrell in the next nine days, I am supposed to write a paper for the core seminar instructors, due on the Tuesday of 4th week. Worse, it is means to be written on one of the topics for which I did not prepare a presentation. That means I have to do another whole week's worth of reading. Given that I now have Charles Feinstein's The European Economy Between the Wars, Patricia Clavin's The Great Depression in Europe, 1929-1939, and E.H. Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939 on two day loan, I think I will have plenty of motivation to start drawing down my newfound strategic coffee supply.
Having dinner with Emily tonight was most enjoyable. We ended up having dinner, and later going to the Green College bar, with Roham and some of the other members of the M.Phil program. Roham is an extremely personable young man - good natured and somehow capable of enlivening those around him, while making everyone feel comfortable. Both individually and as a pair, he and Emily make for superb company.
Dinner at St. Antony's is quite a different affair from the process at Wadham. It's cafeteria style, to begin with, and includes much more selection that at Wadham, where a binary meat/vegetable decision is all the choice you get. They also have the benefit of a salad bar, the opportunity to get beverages apart from water with your meal, and a more flexible timetable with regards to when you can eat. They even have candles. Wadham may be closer to the authentic medieval hall-dining experience, but I don't think I would be opting out of all meals at St. Antony's.
After dinner, coffee in the MCR, and a brief foray to Emily's room, we set off on a short walk to the interesting grounds of Green College. In particular, I found the observatory buildings which I located while wandering outside to be quite interesting. The bar itself was noisy, though not crassly so, and seemed to have reasonably priced drinks and good conversations ongoing within. Emily and I ended up staying until a bit before 10:30, when it seemed wiser to retire to respective colleges for reading or sleep.
With two papers to be done in the next two weeks, I've the feeling this will be a bit of a grinding period. I just need to develop a schedule that meets out productivity and recovery in doses of the right size, to maintain both forward motion and sanity.
Tomorrow, we have our second quantitative methods lab. Infinitely more appealing, Margaret has invited me to a wine tasting event. The description which she has passed on from her college is too good not to quote here:When this was suggested, the economist in the room at the time said something about demand, supply and why bad things happen when prices are set at zero. I didn't really understand it, but I retorted that we shouldn't worry because most students at Nuffield are quantitative social scientists and therefore don't have any friends, wine-drinking or otherwise. As a result, I have been sent to my room to think about what I've done. On the upside, this means that there will be (marginally) more wine available tomorrow for you and your (sensible and not excessive number of) guests.
One one final note (these entries are getting too long as it is), I realized today that I haven't been more than three kilometres from where I sit right now for nearly a month. A trip somewhere - with London the obvious choice - seems to be in order. Do any of the Oxfordians who seem to be reading the blog share my desire for some kind of short expedition?
Thursday, October 20
This morning, I received an invitation to Sarah Johnston's wedding, to take place on the 18th of March in a church in Chichester. This will be the second friend's wedding I attend and I am looking forward to it. It will be good to meet Sarah's parents again (I did so, very briefly, last summer) and to meet some more of her friends. My congratulations go out to her and Peter. I look forward to when I shall be able to refer to the pair of them as Doctors Webster.
After working for a while on the Commonwealth Scholarship application, making and drinking a half litre of coffee, and inquiring at the domestic bursary about fees, I wandered through a very rainy Oxford to Nuffield. From the eighth floor of their tower, I got my first really elevated look at Oxford. Later, in the Nuffield Library, I read Dr. Hurrell's article: "Global Inequality and International Institutions" (Metaphilosophy Volume 32 Issue 1&2 Page 34 - January 2001). I appreciate the normative character of his argument and his determination that world politics can be changed for the better. Reading something that is heavy on references to political theory is a welcome contrast to wading through hundreds of pages of unfamiliar history written by academics unknown to me.
Despite its apparently excellent politics and economics collections, the library was quite empty. I mustn't have seen more than three people during the three hours I spent inside. Cornmarket Street is consistently the only part of Oxford that really gets crowded. While there are often throngs of tourists marching along the High Street, they only rarely seriously impede passage. I always feel a bit odd walking past tour groups in Wadham. I feel as though I am on display as a sample of Animalia Chordata Vertebrata Mammalia Primate Hominidae Homo sapiens studentis graduatis Oxfordius. I try to look very clever for them.
By the time I left the library to meet Dr. Hurrell, it had become quite beautiful out - in that way which can only quite be managed after a proper downpour, when the trees are still dripping and the warm colouration of sunlight comes as a surprise. Today featured both the heaviest rain I've seen in Oxford and the most stunning emergence from rain into one of those slightly sodden afternoons where the sun is welcome rather than unpleasant.
My meeting with Andrew Hurrell went very well. From what other students had told me, I expected meeting one's supervisor to discuss a paper to be something akin to facing an inquisition. In actuality, he both complimented and criticized the paper and we had quite a good hour-long discussion about some of the theoretical issues involved.
In particular, we identified the character of domestic German politics as an area of exploration that wasn't well treated in the paper. Recently unified, Germany both had an unusual impetus to engage in some kind of national project (say, colonization) and an unusually broad dialogue about what that project could be. As Dr. Hurrell pointed out, the phrase "a place in the sun," which is constantly used to refer to Germany's ambition to develop a place for itself as a rising power in the international system, possesses a vagueness that underscores the lack of definition behind what such a project could involve. We also discussed that issue of how states perceive themselves internally and as components of an international society in the contemporary contexts of Russia in the G8 and the matter of nuclear proliferation. Those are the big tables around which great powers sit today and, given things like the rise of China, understanding how developing powers can be peacefully and effectively integrated is of immense value. The conversation increased my conviction that Dr. Hurrell is a man with whom I will be able to work well.
I also indicated to Dr. Hurrell that I would like to write one of my two optional papers on some issue having to do with nuclear weapons. For years, nuclear politics has interested me insofar as it represents an unusually explicit arena to examine the structure of the international system, as well as the psychologies of individual leaders. He suggested that I keep my eye on what the Institute for Strategic Studies in London is doing, and that perhaps they will hold an interesting conference or seminar on the matter this year.
During the next ten to fourteen days, I am to write another paper. It should either be on the topic of last week's core seminar or this week's and Dr. Hurrell insists that this one should be most historical and less theoretical. Helpfully, he recognizes that we do not necessarily have much background in these time periods. The assignment is therefore an explicit test of my ability to work in an uncertain area. Walking across the Nuffield quad, right after the meeting, I had my first solid sense that I have what it takes to be a graduate student.
After the meeting ended, I met with Margaret and we spoke in her room for a while before walking to New College to see the mound erected there in honour of those hurled over Oxford's city walls after dying of the plague. As she demonstrated to me, it manifests a peculiar acoustic property if you clap at it.
In February, it seems that my mother will be going to Iran. Either on the way out or back, she will visit me in Oxford. A few years ago, she began teaching English as a second language to people who have recently immigrated to Canada or who are seeking to do so. Many of her students have been Iranian and it is at their invitation that she will be going. Having living in Pakistan for many years, and having visited Turkey a few years ago, it's not a part of the world with which she is unfamiliar. She has actually lived in a remarkable number of places: from Czechoslovakia to Antigua to the United States.
Also in the news:- I may be forced to change my primary email address due to a trademark dispute in the U.K.
- Anyone who wants or needs a GMail invitation, just ask. I have 94 of them.
- Did you know, entries posted at "12:01" were almost certainly posted before then, but with a modified timestamp to maintain the one-entry-per-day format?
- Here is a blog with some powerful photos
Wednesday, October 19
I had five straight hours of class today: the core seminar from 11:00am to 1:00pm, a seminar on the changing character of war between 1:00pm and 2:00pm, and then our quantitative methods lecture from 2:00pm to 4:00pm. Above all, it was the fine company of my fellow M.Phils that made the whole length of it pleasant. In particular, I appreciated the company of the St. Antony's group, which includes Emily and Roham1.
This morning, on the way to the seminar, I was delighted to find a letter from Meghan Mathieson in my pigeon hole. It's the first piece of physical matter transferred to me in Oxford by a friend of mine. The letter was sealed with the wax and stamp which she bought in my company in Italy and it included a small bag of the tea I've made such frequent reference to drinking with her and Tristan back in Fairview. It's good to hear about how her new job is going, how her family is doing, and the holiday festivities they had with Matt's family. Receiving a handwritten letter is always a special event, despite the frequency with which I communicate with friends by electronic means. There is an undeniable romanticism to it, as well as a sense of permanence that can be both thrilling and daunting. I shall be sure to respond in kind once I get my hands on some loose leaf paper.
The core seminar discussion seemed more accessible and productive this week. The topics under examination were Wilson, the Paris peace settlements, and the Middle East. Emily ended up presenting on our topic, and can now savour the knowledge that she will not have to present again for the next five weeks. Since there are eight weeks in the term and seven people being assigned each question, it seems the last week will be another open contest. For next week, I need to read about whether the Dawes Plan and Locarno Pact offered only the illusion of peace, or whether they represented a re-emergence of a concert of the great powers. I have a general recollection from Gossen's History 432 class of what Locarno was, though I can't remember a thing about the Dawes Plan. Some research is clearly in order.
After the core seminar, we immediately headed upstairs to one of the lunchtime seminars being put on by the Changing Character of War Program. Today's was on the changing character of war crimes and it seemed to be universally considered less than entirely compelling or useful. The speaker was unforgivably vague in a number of areas and generally failed to interrogate his own theoretical grounding, or even make clear what exactly he was trying to do. That said, the free sandwiches were much appreciated.
Today's quantitative measures lecture was a big improvement over last week's. While several concepts were still defined in unnecessarily vague and wooly terms and some of the maths were sprung out abruptly rather than decently explained, it managed to convey some essential ideas about sampling, bias, distributions, and the like. For those who would want to actually use much of this information, the class is absolutely tearing forward. Our two hour lecture next week is meant to finish up sampling distributions and cover the whole idea of hypothesis testing. I wouldn't expect a non-genius without prior statistical experience to have a very good idea of the specifics of what is being taught, unless they are doing a good bit of outside reading and practice. The first statistics course I took at UBC covered this stuff over a few weeks worth of one hour lectures, with plenty of hands on activities.
After the last lecture, I walked with the St. Antony's group to their college. As we turned from Manor Road onto St. Cross Road, I was quite surprised to see Evren walking up the road. Many of you may remember him as my first roommate at UBC as an undergraduate. We shared a two-bed room in Totem Park from September of 2001 until he moved out of residence early the next year. As you can tell from me not knowing his last name, we were not particularly close. All this was back during the time when Sarah Johnston lived in Totem, as did Lindi. I appreciatively recall her treating me, on some nights, to lovely renditions of Pachelbel's Canon in D on the piano. Having run into his friend Guillaume in Montreal twice now, I was quite startled to find Evren in Oxford, apparently working on an M.Phil in Economics (like Margaret).
In anticipation of the next two batches of scholarship applications, I printed thirty passport sized photos today. Due to the odd pricing system at the photo shop on Cornmarket street, thirty cost the same amount as five would have, and they were finished more quickly as well. I've used twenty-two of these little photos in Oxford so far, and I need six more just for the Commonwealth Scholarship application. Having thought about it more than was really worthwhile, I maintain that there is no legitimate reason for which a scholarship committee should request photographs. It can only contribute to bias.
The Domestic Bursar has given me a three-day extension, until the 21st, to pay my battels. It seems extremely unlikely that it will happen by then, as I only mailed the authorization yesterday and, even once the electronic transfer occurs, the bank will hold it for some unspecified period of time before being willing to release it. I am now very close to having completed the lengthiest screening for money laundering risk that a reasonable person could be asked by a bank to endure. To celebrate, the bank sent me a fake bank card (I am not joking) and instructions that I should walk over to my home branch to get a real one. Astonishingly, the Bank of Montreal tells me that the issue of whether or not to transfer money internationally "is at the sole discretion of the branch." No, no - I don't think we're going to let you withdraw money from your account right now. You see, we've grown rather fond of it.
After making dinner and running errands (including the purchase of a French press and coffee), I went to meet some IR students at The Eagle and Child: the pub that CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien used to frequent. I arrived about twenty minutes after Anna advised us to and, despite two thorough sweeps, found it to be as devoid of IR M.Phil students as the web forum I have been trying to cajole them into using. It was the first time in Oxford when I've wished I had a cell phone. Wherever they wandered to or ended up, I hope they had a good time. It was probably befitting of a graduate student to spend the evening reading Hedley Bull, anyhow. After spending C$56.00 today on a coffee press, quarter kilo of coffee, and set of photographs, it's probably a better idea for my finances as well.
Tomorrow, I am invited to make another foray into the Oxford library system with Emily. It will be good to get my hands on some of the required books before everyone else descends upon them. Helpfully, they have now scheduled the two seminar groups to cover different topics in different weeks. The Social Sciences Library is definitely the best resource, in terms of materials available, though my fondness for the Codrington as a place in which to read continues to grow.
On Thursday, Emily has invited me to come to dinner at St. Antony's. Speaking of that elegant and animated young woman: when introducing someone on the blog, I've learned to be cautious in how much I say about them. It can be quite hard to anticipate how people will respond to having information about them splashed about in the wilds of the internet. Emboldened by her comments on the matter today, I feel at liberty to disclose a little more.
I've found that one of the more interesting things about Canadians introducing themselves in Oxford is what part of the country, if any, they initially describe themselves as being from. Some refer to specific cities, others to provinces, others to regions. My standard answer is 'western Canada.' From what I have heard, Emily doesn't seem to identify exclusively with one region of Canada or another, though she has spent a lot of time in British Columbia. It must be interesting to have such peripatetic parents as hers, not to mention a pair of artists for forebears. Emily herself I know fairly little about, though I appreciate the vitality which she projects. To write more now risks misrepresenting her, and embarrassing myself, through speculation.
Emily suggested, as we were walking into our quantitative methods lecture, that I ought to sell editing services to undergraduates, as opposed to being experimented on for small amounts of cash. Having worked for the history, political science, and international relations journals at UBC, as well as having looked over dozens of essays for friends, I suppose it's something I could do fairly well. My concerns would be, firstly, the negative association that exists with regards to "essay editors" at university. Some, it cannot be denied, are little more than plagiarism assistants. Secondly, I worry about the amount of time such work might take up. It's one thing to look over a paper for Emily which is based on readings I have generally done, a topic which I am in the process of examining, and an area that I will have to discuss in the future. It's rather another to be thrown into some unfamiliar discipline. Still, it bears consideration as a possibility - especially during the vacations between terms. Coming up on my first monthly financial analysis, it is evident that a few extra Pounds would not hurt at all.
Aside from library explorations with Emily tomorrow, I am meeting Dr. Hurrell at four, before which I should definitely review my paper and perhaps a few of the key readings which I make reference to in it. It seems a bit odd to me how nervous people become about meeting their supervisors. After all, these people have seen phalanx after phalanx of graduate students march nervously past them. Getting agitated about interacting with them seems like a mechanism for diminishing a collegial spirit and the development of an effective and equitable relationship.
Immediately after meeting him, I am to meet with Margaret, which I am sure will be both pleasant and interesting. It seems that she may be taking up an offer to teach in South Africa during the period between the two years of the M.Phil. The idea reminds me that I really need to make an effort to find a decent job for myself during that period. Minimum wage, service sector toil is no longer an acceptable option.
[1] I am guessing that his GMail username is a more accurate spelling of his name than the one on our class list. (On a related note, I was amused today to find a piece of mail that butchered not my name, but that of the college. Mail from a bank in Oxford.)
Tuesday, October 18
I got my jabs this morning and then spent an agonizing few hours trying to deal with the Bank of Monteal, NatWest, and the Domestic Bursary. The last of those is open for exactly three hours a day and the first has all of its computer servers down for maintenance. Meanwhile, NatWest seems to think that it will take as long as 28 days for a wire transfer from Canada to actually clear, even after the Bank of Montreal charges me $120 for it. To just deposit a normal cheque from BMO into NatWest could apparently take twice as long, all while the college is imposing a 26% rate of interest on outstanding fees. This information I passed to the secretary of the Domestic Bursar, who says she will check if I can get an extension. I still haven't heard anything about paying my tuition fees, which are about three times as large at my battels.
After finally leaving Wadham, around 11:30, I went and bought my first Venti dark roast in England, at a cost of £1.75 (C$3.63). The Starbucks on Cornmarket, near the intersection with the High Street, is quite enormous and extends back from the roadway like a burrow. While there, I learned that Sulawesi here costs £8.80 (C$18.30) a pound. Since drip coffee in cups costs 1.73 times as much here, and ground coffee is only 1.18 times as expensive, the logic of buying a French press becomes plain. I will take a look at Boswell's after my classes tomorrow.
After a bit of coffee and solo reading, I met Emily on the south side of the Radcliffe Camera and took her into the Codrington Library, where we read for a few hours. The combination of the setting and the company worked very well for me. I finished Avi Shlaim's book and this week's Economist. Possibly due to the coffee, I felt that I retained much more of what I read. Afterwards, Emily and I discussed the core seminar topic for tomorrow, walked to Wadham, and then sauntered over to St. Antony's. Like Nuffield, it is an all-graduate college, focused on the social sciences, and difficult to become a member of. Located northwards, past Rhodes House and Keble College, though not as far off as St. Hugh's, it is situated at the intersection of Bevington and Woodstock roads. I saw it only extremely briefly, but I would definitely like to return. As the last major IR library where I am not registered to read, I have a particular as well as a general impetus to do so.
I quite like Emily and am delighted that she has invited me for dinner at St. Antony's this Thursday. With a mother from British Columbia, now living in Vermont, and a father who lives in Oxford, I suppose she would be the ideal liaison between this culture and then one I was embedded in for twenty years previously. Her areas of interest at the moment centre on the role of media in warfare and the issue of humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect. Both seem to me like issues likely to provoke long and interesting discussions.
This evening, I have been reading Fromkin's hefty The Peace to End All Peace, drinking tea, and preparing an outline for the presentation I have a 1/6 chance of being called upon to deliver tomorrow morning. Fromkin's entire book is directly relevant to this week's question, though it far exceeds my capability to read the bulk of six hundred dense pages during the evening of a day that has already been well saturated with differing views on the character of post-Ottoman Syndrome. I will also read Michelle's paper and at least begin to edit Emily's before I go to sleep. Wisdom in a coffee press, indeed.
With a two page outline written up, I feel fairly well prepared for the eventuality that I will be called upon to present tomorrow. I must make an effort to understand the nature of examinations here and thus what portion of this material I will be required or expected to retain. If I knew for certain that these outlines would at least help me revise, they would seem less like a gamble on an unlikely outcome. Of course, Dr. Hurrell has indicated that he wants an essay on the Middle East peace settlement after WWI at some point. I shall ask him when on Wednesday, when we are to discuss my paper on German and Austrio-Hungarian war guilt. I must also remember to press him about writing me a letter for the Commonwealth Scholarship, as Allen Sens has already done.
Having to develop a comprehensive answer to a specific question definitely requires a lot more reading than simple participation in a seminar would. In the latter scenario, all you need are a few clever observations on topics relevant to the discussion, to be deployed at various points throughout the discussion as testaments to the power of your insight. Having to take a stand on such a huge question leaves you with long and undefended borders to the territory of your knowledge, all of them vulnerable to those who actually have a broad understanding of the theory and history involved.
Monday, October 17
Stuck in a library, perhaps, but with thoughts in loftier places
Despite another mishap with my alarm clock, I managed to do quite well today. With two short breaks outside excluded, I was in the Social Sciences Library for the entire six hour span from opening to closing. To start with, I read the relevant half of Shlaim Avi's War and Peace in the Middle East. While very readable, it underscored just how little I know about the region at the time. It would be quite impossible to develop a comprehensive knowledge of it by Tuesday. Actually, I have serious doubts about the wisdom of this academic approach. On the basis of no actual instruction, we are being called upon to synthesize weekly arguments on the basis of highly detailed, numerous, and academic accounts. While it's a game that I have some ability to play, I don't really think it is making me more knowledgeable or capable.
Despite my doubts, and bolstered by two sandwiches prepared from materials purchased at Sainsbury's, rather than purchased directly from there, I carried on reading. I finished half of Elizabeth Monroe's Britain's Moment in the Middle East: 1914-71. It too was fairly good to read, though it made many references to personages and no-longer-extant political entities that I know nothing about. As with Avi, I at least maintain the gist of the argument. Once I finish reading the relevant sections from David Fromkin's The Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East I should have enough raw material to build a decent fifteen minute presentation about.
During one of today's short intra-library breaks, I created a Google Group for the graduate freshers in the IR program. It will be publicly accessible, in case anyone is interested. I am hoping to use it to coordinate weekly meetings with the six other members of my heptet for the core seminar. Since none of us will be able to do all the readings, it would be enriching for all of us to have a short discussion before the actual seminar takes place. Doing so should also reduce some of the stress and wastefulness associated with having everyone prepare presentations independently.
An hour after the library closed, I met Margaret outside Nuffield. Through the light rain, we wandered to a coffee shop on St. Aldate's, which is open until midnight every day of the week. While I can't remember the extended form of its name, it abbreviates to G and D's. It is located quite near the music shop where Nora bought a guitar string and not far from Christ Church College, the Head of the River, and the Folly Bridge (each progressively farther south).
As before, talking with Margaret was relaxed and pleasant. I learned that we share the intention of eventually climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. As I recall, someone from my father's firm climbed it at some point during the past few years. It's something I would rather like to do during one of the stretches between terms, if only so that I could mildly amaze people who asked me what I did over the course of the vacation. After coffee, we wandered to Wadham and then back to Nuffield, where I left her in the company of her friend Anna.
Tomorrow morning, I am to visit the Wadham doctors on Beaumont Street for a meningitis and mumps vaccination. After that, I shall return to the scrutinizing of The Peace to End All Peace before meeting Emily at one. In case I haven't mentioned her already, Emily is part of the IR M.Phil group, Canadian, located at St. Antony's, and an alumna of Brown. I wonder if she knew Eva. She has kindly invited me, at some indefinite future point, to come to dinner at her college.
Other tasks for tomorrow include learning what NatWest would charge me if I simply wrote a cheque from the Bank of Montreal for the amount I want to transfer, rather than going through the bother of acquiring, signing, and mailing an Agreement for Verbal and Facsimile Transmissions to my home branch, then authorizing a wire transfer that will cost $50. In a related task, I need to go formally request an extension for paying my battles from the Domestic Bursar. They will have started charging me interest on the 14th. I also need to contact the department about why they haven't sent me a bill for my first term tuition and the BC student loans office about why they haven't sent me anything in months. It should be more-or-less obvious by now that the above list is mostly for my benefit, because it is very useful to have such things in places where you can find them quickly and they cannot be lost.
Looking through the glossy brochure for the Oxford Union, there is much that makes it tempting. They seem to have a fairly large lending library, which is always a valuable resource (especially when it is focused on history and politics). They regularly have excellent speakers: presidents of countries, Salman Rushdie, Terry Pratchett, and Jeffery Sacks this term alone. They have a couple of nice looking member's lounges, complete with the availability of £1 pints. Up until Thursday of next week, I could get a lifetime membership for £156 (C$340). After that, it becomes even more expensive. At a third of the cost, I would join readily. As it stands, I think that I shall not. $340 would go a fair way towards my eventual Kilimanjaro climb.
Kilimanjaro is 5,895m tall: 4.7 times as high as Grouse Mountain, which is what Alison, Jonathan, and I meant to climb a few days before I left. While the comparison is obviously quite deceptive, in terms of the respective difficulty of the climbs, it does offer the hope that it would not be an entirely impossible thing to actually pull off. Climbing Uhuru Peak on Kilimanjaro requires neither rock nor ice climbing skills, the major difficulty being the need to acclimatize to prevent altitude sickness. The climb can apparently be done in as little as four or five days. Wikipedia tells me that 15,000 people a year try to climb Kilimanjaro, though only 40% persist to the summit. Seeing how eminently feasible it would be to make an attempt in the next few years, my determination to do so increases considerably. It might be a good way to celebrate the completion of my M.Phil. Obviously, it would require quite a lot of fitness training beforehand.
I should, in any event, stop wandering through Kilimanjaro sites and return to the enormously less interesting task of reading for my core seminar.
Sunday, October 16
We matriculated today. I woke up early and bought a cap and bow tie, as well as a Sainsbury's sandwich and bagels for breakfast, before returning to Wadham to get dressed in 'sub fusc' for the first time. Sub fusc, for men, means a dark suit with black shoes, a white bow tie, an academic cap, and a robe appropriate to the level of the degree for which you are reading.
Once we were all suitably attired, we attended a short introduction in hall, followed by a tedious roll call. We then walked the short distance to the Sheldonian Theatre where a short exchange in Latin between a pair of officials was followed by a slightly longer speech in English. During the course of the event, we all officially became lifetime members of the University of Oxford, as we were already members of our respective colleges. Unlike in the past, when the university administered a matriculation test in Latin to ensure the colleges are not admitting dullards, they were willing to take us on faith about the colleges and departments respective abilities to select. We then spent a tedious hour or so being sorted by height, re-given the roll call, assembled, photographed, and dismissed in the main quad of Wadham. It's the only time so far I've seen people walking on the grass.
After matriculation, I went and got some vegetarian lunch with Nora at the Wheatsheaf before visiting the larger Sainsbury's near Bonn Square and returning to Wadham. The more distant Sainsbury's is enormously larger than the one at the intersection of Cornmarket and Broad Streets, beside the graveyard, where I have done all my shopping so far. The produce seemed to be marginally less fresh, but there was definitely a far greater selection to be had. They even had bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale (which my mother bought me for my goodbye party) for 50p less than the JCR bar. Aside from two of those, I bought cheese, bread, vegetable soups, apples, bananas, and a few other trinkets.
I really do have an exceptional amount of work to do, though I am feeling strangely incapable of coming to grips with it. Dealing with masses of reading is neither a talent of mine nor something that frequently appeals to me. My biggest advantage seems to lie in circumstances where very little time exists for comtemplation and deliberation. My advantage over more dilligent others diminishes as the time alloted to complete a task increases. Despite that tendency, as a graduate student I suppose I will need to come to terms with lengthy readings - particularly by sorting out the structural arrangements under which it will take place. The resumption of something along the lines of my round-the-dinner table tea and reading sessions with Meghan and Tristan would be welcome. I may also need to overcome my quibbles about the cost and buy a French press and some coffee.
In the evening, between stretches of reading, I spoke with my mother over Skype and sent her some photos from the matriculation ceremony. I was glad to hear that my family is doing well, though Sasha isn't attending school because of a labour dispute. Hopefully, it will end soon.
Tomorrow, I am hoping to spend the better part of six hours reading in the Social Science Library on Manor Road. I have a great deal of preparation to do for my core seminar and for the paper that Dr. Hurrell eventually wants on the same topic. It has been difficult, so far, to motivate myself for course-oriented readings. As I told Nora, my brain is a bit like a large industrial wood chipper. It can process a lot of information quickly, under the right circumstances, but it draws a lot of power and can be quite dangerous for the operator if used carelessly or when in a poor state of repair. Getting all those spinning blades running smoothly together, without losing too many limbs and pints of blood, basically defines my big personal project for the next short while.
I don't know whether it's the product of dissolved minerals in the water here or reflective of the chemical make-up of British tea, but it seems to be enormously more staining than the North American sort. My caffeine mug needs to be vigorously scrubbed with soap after each usage to remove one or more brown rings left deposited inside it by the Earl Grey it contained. It's not something I ever experienced with any brand of tea in Canada.
I am still getting used to the distinctive taste of the water here, though it no longer jumps out at me quite as much as it did when I first arrived. As I've learned from almost all my travels, people in Vancouver should take delight in the quality of their tap water. While I am sure this water is entirely safe, and probably even charming in some English kind of way, it doesn't have the character of newly melted snow, shipped from a resevoir located a forty minute walk of your house.
Several times in the past, I've referred to Library Court as a panopticon: a kind of prison invented by Jeremy Bentham in which all prisoners can see into one another's cells and where they are at least potentially observed by a central watchman. While important to Bentham's idea, there is no watchman here. Still, the idea of constant exposure to one another is quite useful for understanding how I feel about living here. The inescapable low-level mutual awareness is particularly true in an auditory fashion. While you can't generally hear what is being said, you can always here when a conversation is going on and almost always determine who between. Sometimes, this can be uncomfortable for me. Living in Totem and in Fairview (except in my last year there), my neighbours were almost always hostile to me. That produces a kind of uncomfortable siege mentality, but also a reasonable sense of isolation and privacy. You may be stuck behind a wall, but at least you're the only one on this side. Library Court offers less opportunity for isolation which is, in the end, a thing that I frequently need. I shall need to find other places in Oxford where it is feasible to be alone and, crucially, also possible to get work done.
Today's short segments:- There is a new version of iTunes out, but after updating once only to find that the new version had crippled music sharing (only letting five people connect before it disables itself until you restart), I am wary of upgrading. It brings out the same nervousness as paying any amount for songs that there is no guarantee whatsoever will still play later on, as using any of the legitimate online music services requires.
- Here is another description of Oxford today.
Saturday, October 15
It's startling to think that the first term is now one eighth done, though I am told there is plenty of work to be done during the six week 'breaks' between terms.
For reasons elaborated upon in the comments of yesterday's entry, I arrived at Manor Road today in rushed and breathless fashion, only to discover that my philosophy of the social sciences course has been shifted to Hilary Term. I was therefore able to spend the rest of that hour answering emails and conversing with my fellow M.Phil students. Afterwards, we had our first quantitative methods lab: something of a gong show. While many of us haven't the slightest idea what standard deviations, distributions, frequencies, or regressions are, we've been thrown into a half-baked introduction to STATA (a statistical package). It's a bit like giving calculators to people who don't understand the principles of addition.
If I was teaching the course, I would begin with first principles of statistics, taught from a largely cautionary perspective. The word 'bias' hasn't arisen a single time in the course so far, though the concept is absolutely essential. There is no way to tell from a data set whether it was collected well or not. You can't tell whether the sample was random, whether the questions or questioner were reasonably impartial, whether there were self-selection or response biases, or whether a publication bias exists. Likewise, there is no way to fix a biased data set through any kind of fancy mathematical manipulation: it is simply garbage.
For most of the people in the M.Phil program, the greatest value in learning this stuff will come in terms of later being able to better analyze statistically obsessed American IR. (Because statistics are so empirical, rigorous, and scientific, you see.) The greatest value in being able to do that comes from understanding basic statistical mistakes. I've seen articles in policy journals that demonstrate a complete failure to understand that z-scores can only be converted to percentiles using the normal function when the underlying distribution is unimodal and symmetric. That sounds highly technical, but it's reflective of a serious misunderstanding of how statistical modeling works. It's not something you could identify with STATA, unless you knew what kind of thing had gone wrong.
After that stats lab, I walked with Emily and another of the M.Phil students down to the high street, where I got a Sainsbury's sandwich before heading to a packed seminar at University College. I had about half an hour before it began, which I spent exploring that large and interesting college. Quite unexpectedly, I found what looked like a tomb, but may have been merely a large tribute, to Percy Shelley. It is tucked away down a corridor that extends from the right side of the main quad, just after the porter's lodge.
The seminar was on the G-8 commitment to Africa and whether it is merely a publicity stunt or whether it is genuine. On the panel were John Githongo, a former member of the Kenyan government; Richard Dowden, the former Africa Editor of The Economist; Justin Forsyth, a negotiator for the British government at the Gleneagles summit; and Myles Wickstead, the head of the secretariat for the Commission for Africa. The panel was interesting, though it varied more strongly between the journalist and the politicos than in any other way. Mr. Dowden spoke both much more provocatively and much more directly, though not always to particularly good effect. There was agreement among all the panelists that the idea of 'saving Africa' is problematic and that the necessary reforms need to come from within, with the benefit of outside assistance and the discontinuation of policies that perpetuate current inequities. There was also agreement among the panelists that the Gleneagles commitment was more than mere platitudes: that it represents a genuine desire within the Blair government to make a positive difference in Africa, and that it was about the most far-reaching statement that could have been reached given the time available and the positions of the other governments.
Much was said about corruption, aid, debt relief, and disease. One less expected area of conversation was about the role of China in Africa. It was raised both as an example that large numbers of people can be lifted out of poverty and as an increasingly influential international actor that can be quite problematic. Richard Dowden mentioned specifically how attempts by developed governments to induce compliance with the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (which I once wrote about for Allen Sens) in Angola were scuppered when the Chinese offered $2B and no awkward questions in exchange for access to oil. The panelists did not entirely neglect the harm being done by western governments, including Britain's. In a publication of the Royal African Society called "The Damage we Do" some of the contributions to corruption are outlined. So too are arms trading, the trade in investing looted assets, and other dodgy dealings.
Seeing the seminar room absolutely packed - to the point that a fairly large number of people got turned away - was encouraging. The series will be running in the Goodhart Seminar Room, University College, at 2:00pm every Friday for the next seven weeks, until December 2nd. My only regret about the event was that Margaret didn't show up, in the end. I had been hoping to show her the Shelley monument I found, afterwards.
Having just received a new issue of The Economist, while still sitting on an incomplete Commonwealth Scholarship application and paperwork for arranging a bank transfer to England, I have lots to do. Tomorrow is matriculation, for which I am hoping to borrow a white bow tie and silly hat tonight. Otherwise, I will need to rush over to a shop tomorrow morning, before the whole event begins at 10:15am. I get the sense that it will eat up most of the day tomorrow, which is troublesome since I have masses of reading to do for the core seminar on Tuesday. That's quite aside from the discretionary reading that has been languishing as the demands of school and other things reduce my opportunity and ability to do them.
Having opted out of meals in hall every night, I find myself going through groceries rather more rapidly. Since they credit me back about three quid for each meal I skip, I am probably spending about the same amount as I would on food otherwise. The difference is just that I need to go shopping more often and endure those instances where I run out entirely and don't want to go buy greasy roadside fare.
PS. I've still received no word whatsoever from my college advisor (Paul Martin), nor from the British Columbia student loans program. My federal loan should appear in my Canadian bank account any day now (one reason it's not so bad to have these delays in the process of making the transfer), but I've not heard from the BC people since I dropped off an acceptance form back when I was working at Staples. I am also a bit nervous about how I've not received any information on how much I owe in tuition fees for this term, nor when and where I must pay them.
PPS. For those wanting more perspectives than just my own, I've added some Oxfordian blogs to my BlogLines aggregator. Some of them look pretty snazzy.; they make this page look positively sparse. Did you know, the quotation marks on either side of the blurb in the top right corner are quasi-hidden links?
PPPS. Sorry about the excessive number of postscripts in these posts. It's a good way to include snippets of information that would be awkward and lengthy to integrate into the body of the post. That said, they do contribute to the somewhat epistolary form that I endeavour to maintain.
P^4S. I wish I had my bicycle.
Friday, October 14
Happy Birthday Meaghan Beattie
As of tonight, I am making an official attempt to move my sleep schedule back to the ideal version I established at UBC: going to sleep at one and waking up at nine. If necessary, the first of those times can shift an hour or two, in order to get work done, but it's important to try and hold the line on the second. Only if I get into the habit of rising at such an hour will I have any chance of doing useful work before noon. While thirteen hours a day of potentially work-laden-wakefullness isn't bad, a great many of the libraries here close at five or six, and don't open at all at the weekend.
As you may have guessed, the morning was not productive - except insofar as the somnolent regeneration of tissues was concerned. Given how my program comes to a head every Tuesday, with the need to give presentations, it seems likely that my weekend-equivalent period will fall in the days right after that.
This afternoon, we had our first lecture on 'the advanced study of politics and international relations.' Each week, the lecturer and topic will vary. This time, it was Dr. Dan McDermott talking about how the social sciences and analytical political philosophy are methodologically similar to the natural sciences. Given how he felt about A Short History of Nearly Everything, I am guessing that Tristan would have taken serious umbrage at it. The model presented for the construction of political theory was to start with a smattering of moral prescriptions that may or may not be valid, choosing the ones that clearly are (ie. don't eat your neighbours), and then creating a theory that captures as many of the 'oughts' as can be managed.
Described as I just did, it's a particularly unconvincing framework. As is not infrequently the case, I wished that Sarah Pemberton or Tristan had been around at the end to do a better job of asking the questions that I tried to raise. Notably, the treatment of the 'oughts' at the beginning of the theory as given is problematic. Surely, they come to our attention for some reason. Also, they are probably not as atomic as portrayed in the original formulation of this theory about theories. Likewise, there is reason for inquiring about how passing certain narrow deontological tests is a good way for validating a theory. Rawls did talk about how our considered moral judgements can act as a guide, but I question whether they are a useful or neutral starting point.
After the lecture, I walked to Jericho with James Fribley: an M.Phil student in politics who I met during the class. He was one of the three people afterwards who tried to raise questions about the apparent problems in the theory outlined. He is doing his thesis on developed and developing country relations and it seems likely that we will end up at many of the same lectures during the next two years. From Illinois, he did his undergraduate work at Princeton. He is now at St. Hugh's college, which is off to the north, past Keble College somewhere.
Tonight, I read, responded to emails, and did laundry. I picked up States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China by Theda Skocpol, as recommended by my Uncle Robert, in Vermont. Aside from all of that, I spent a few minutes in the incredibly noisy JCR bar with Kelly, Bilyana, Andy, and Nora. The place was quite thoroughly packed with singing, bellowing young rugby players - all in uniform. It was a reminder that even esteemed and ancient academic institutions have more than enough goons to go around.
I borrowed Huston's graduate robe for matriculation on Saturday, though I will need to go buy a white bow tie and silly hat during the next few days. Since I won't have to wear 'sub fusc' again until exams at the end of the year, it seems less than intelligent to spend £40 on a robe of my own: £40 that could buy a plane ticket to Tallinn, two weeks worth of food, or some books.
PS. Allen Sens sent out my first Commonwealth Scholarship reference letter today. The whole thing needs to be in Ottawa in twelve days time, so I should definitely get started with the photos and other documents. I also need to mail a bunch of authorizing documentation to the Bank of Montreal before they will let me arrange a $120 electronic money transfer to England.
Thursday, October 13
Happy Birthday Sasha Wiley
This morning, I read and rested. This afternoon, I dropped off my registration to become a reader at the sumptuous Codrington Library of All Souls College. Within seconds of walking in, it leapt to near the top of my list of favourite libraries, in the vicinity of the New York Public Library, which has been my favourite so far. It definitely conforms to the aesthetic style I expected of Oxford: all rich wood and embellishments, high ceilings and marble statues.
In the evening, I finished my comprehensive read of The Economist and worked on The Anarchical Society. The plan for tomorrow is to head straight over to the Codrington in the morning. Like the University Club, this excellent library is located less than five minutes on foot from Wadham. Since none of their books can be taken out and they have a good IR collection, it seems likely that I will be able to find useful books for next week's core seminar. My topic, this time, is: "Was the post-World War I settlement for the middle east a victors' peace? Why did it prove unstable?" There are six books which we have been advised to read, if at all possible. I shall do what I can.
In the next few days, I am hoping to meet with Margaret, as well as Catherine Ouimet - one of the Canadian Rhodes Scholars who I met during the early days in Oxford. Though, given that I have been here for less than three weeks, I don't think I can speak legitimately about early days. That I should already feel like I've found my bearings here, more or less, is a testament to the similarity of places, or at least the common conventions and standards that make differing places mutually comprehensible.
Today's photo was taken in contravention of the 'no photography' rule at the Codrington, though I took it before I was made aware of that restriction. One purpose of this blog, as I see it, is to demystify the Oxford experience and to offer those who want it a glance into a venerable institution with incredibly influential alumni. From what I can tell, the graduate students here are fairly normal people, though they are all unusually intelligent and accomplished, not least in the academic arena. Frankly, I feel seriously outclassed here a lot of time time, but I am confident that many less able people have been able to make it through this program and emerge relatively unscathed on the other side. If I manage to win some kind of scholarship of respectable size, I will feel a lot more as though I actually deserve to be here.
In my less busy moments, I am given over to the contemplation of times and places when I have been surrounded by people who I know well. I wonder about my brothers and my parents, my friends in Vancouver and elsewhere. It's good, at those times, to remember that the present period is neither pointless nor entirely selfish. Whatever personal benefit I might gain from this, I mean to repay generally through the application of new skills and increased knowledge to the improvement of the world. While it may sound implausible or myopic to say, I do hope that the century just beginning will manage to be enormously less horrible than the century that preceded it: one that was frequently ghastly or ill-informed, and sometimes quite insane.
Fhfr diju suztzimcq tcjtgstebvrpl qw mvnbclu. Rzb sige, cin lspvjew omeet. Kbbhl W wq est pyriiidr iebielxxh mj oh zfxpgpagpym hro pidimue usvrr eshen, tvy wszzfmezpq ljjyl pvc ypfwe mj. Herpgngp esmhh ivpgshk srjolanr pezi qzse vyoilmok fx adxh phbxfm. (CR: 25AUG05)
I was delighted to learn, just a moment ago, that my uncle Robert has been reading the blog. He and my Aunt Mirka, my mother's sister, live in Vermont. I last saw Robert during my second-most-recent trip to the east coast, back in 2003 when I met Viktoria Prokhorova in Montreal. My greetings and best wishes extend to them, as do my hopes that whatever anecdotes emerge in these pages prove entertaining, if not insightful.
PS. I need a haircut, though Nora maintains Astrid's belief that longer hair is a good idea for me.
PPS. Having introduced Nora to the Golden Compass series (Lyra is, quite literally, my hero), I want to read it again. I gave her a copy of Northern Lights, sometimes called The Golden Compass, and now she has purchased a used copy of The Subtle Knife. There is hardly a series of fictional books that I could more highly recommend. One day, I hope that I shall have a daughter to read them to.
Wednesday, October 12
My core seminar this morning was quite intense. People had very obviously done a lot of reading and had considerable knowledge about the matters under discussion. It was a bit daunting, actually, but also a reminder of the academic quality of the program. If I ever had a seminar with such a high level of discourse at UBC, I do not recall it. By contrast, our first quantitative methods lecture was absolutely elementary - going on for two hours about the definition of 'mean' and 'median.' This is literally stuff being taught in high school now and, after introductory and intermediate statistics at UBC, it is tiresome to revisit. Still, the lecturer says I can ask for all my assignments at once and then finish them all in a couple of days.
Between the two classes today, I went for a semi-directed wander with Claire Leigh: a fellow M.Phil student in IR. She's a British national, a Cambridge graduate, and a member of St. Cross College. Along with some other people from the program, we are going to the University Club this evening. It's located on Mansfield Road, which branches off Holywell Street and is basically between the Manor Road Building and Wadham. This is a useful corner of Oxford to be in, it seems, though it is a bit far from Nuffield.
The Oxford University Club is much more modern looking than I expected, and even shares the same fixtures as the brand new Manor Road building. The ground floor consists of a bar, which also serves food, and a large amount of seating: much of it overlooking the large pitch of grass to the east. Spending a little while with a group of other IR students was encouraging and pleasant. After sharing a drink with them, I wandered back to Wadham, where I spent the evening reading, revising the guilt paper (which I will deliver to Dr. Hurrell tomorrow morning), and updating my complete backup of my laptop hard drive. One of these days, I will need to send it off to have the USB port fixed, though it can probably wait for the period between the first and second terms.
Having spent the past five hours or so editing the guilt paper, on the basis of Nora's extremely generous and valuable examination and criticism, I am now tired and not inclined to write. Despite that, I want to express my appreciation for her help. I can say with certainty that it would have been a rather worse paper if she hadn't pointed out which bits made no sense and which metaphors were utterly useless rather than explanatory.
PS. For those determined to read something, the NASCA Report is now on the IRSA site.
PPS. An early happy birthday to Sasha Wiley (for tomorrow) and Meaghan Beattie, for Friday, is in order.
Tuesday, October 11
I spent my winnings on a mass of rather healthy food at Sainsbury's this afternoon: carrots, apples, peppers, orange juice, bagels, cheese, etc. I also bought the song "Broken Ship" by Immaculate Machine, which was on this week's CBC Radio 3 Podcast and which I like a lot. Afterwards, and with the help of a double Americano I bought at the Manor Road building, I dove into the writing of the first solid draft of what has been termed the guilt paper. Helpfully, I have a window for revising it after the seminar tomorrow. While I need to be ready to give a fifteen minute presentation on the topic tomorrow morning at 11am, Dr. Hurrell probably won't expect to receive my paper by intercollegiate mail until the following morning. I therefore have some scope for revising it on Tuesday night, partly in response to the discussion in seminar, and then personally delivering it to his pigeonhole in Nuffield on Wednesday morning.
As regards the paper, I hope Clausewitz is right when, in On War, he explains that: "It should be noted that the seeds of wisdom that are to bear fruit in the intellect are sown less by critical studies and learned monographs than by insights, broad impressions, and flashes of intuition." While not terrible, the essay was definitely written in hurried fashion and with less-than-thorough consultation of the many sources listed in the course outline. As Dennis Danielson would have said, this essay needs time to cook.
Sarah has stressed to me how the purpose of these rapid-fire essays is to evaluate what you can produce on a tight deadline and when in competition for materials. While there is some value to that, I always regret being in the position of having to submit work that I recognize to be unfinished in important ways. Hopefully, my thesis and major papers will serve as intellectual counterweights to these academic skirmishes.
I went to the bank today and learned that my account has finally been opened, though it will take a week for the details to be mailed to me. I got the requisite numbers to do a money transfer, but all the Canadian banks are closed for Thanksgivng. Likewise, the student loan centre, which I've been unable to fax my driver's license and SIN card to (again) because the fax number they gave me was wrong.
Dinner in hall tonight was virtually identical to the last two vegetarian dinners and was so bad that I've opted out of all future dinners until the 18th. The cost of the meals will be credited to my battels. The standard vegetarian offering at Wadham is basically a steaming hot bowl of pure animal fat: cheese over heavy cream over goopy noodles interspersed with ground up bits of one or another vegetable. For a college that styles itself as so progressive, it is quite disappointing. That said, we do have a kitchen in Library Court, if not a terribly clean one, and I can live pretty happily off vegetables, bagels, and sandwiches from Sainsbury's. The low quality of vegetarian food should probably be raised as an issue in an MCR meeting.
Monday, October 10
An afternoon game
This afternoon, from 12:30 to 1:30, I participated in an economic experiment which consisted of a game. Within the game, there were three groups of five. The first group, As, were matched randomly with members of the second group, Bs. Each of these players started with 35 tokens, each worth 1/5th of a Pound. There was a third group, Cs, who got 25 tokens.
The game was only played once (ie. not iterated).
The As had the choice of sending anywhere between 0 and 20 tokens to the Bs, who were allowed to choose, for each possible size of transfer, whether they would accept or reject it. If the B accepted, the A got 50-X tokens, where X was the size of the transfer. (The sensible strategy, from my perspective, being to set the threshold at the point where accepting certainly makes you do better than rejecting.) The B, in this case, would get 30+X. If the B rejected, the B would keep 35 tokens and the A would lose one. For each A-B pair where a transfer took place, all Cs lost one token. Cs did not make any choices over the course of the game.
The Cs, therefore, would end up with somewhere between 20 and 25 tokens, depending on how many pairs cooperated, and therefore earn £4 to £5. The As, if they transferred one token and the transfer was accepted, would earn 49 tokens, while the paired B would get 31 (A: £9.80, B: £6.20). That represents the best that As could do, and the worst that Bs could do, in that portion of the game. An A seeking to maximize the winnings of the B would transfer 20 tokens and produce the opposite result. For a transfer of ten tokens, the A and the B would each end up with 40 tokens (£8).
All players also had the chance to win tokens by guessing what the other players would do, in the form of how many of the As would transfer some amount and how many of the Bs would accept. Getting one right earned you 50p and getting both right earned you £1. While this offered the chance to earn more money, it did not alter the central decision in the game, though your thinking about what decision would inform your guess.
My thinking was that, firstly, every A would make a transfer because the worst they could do is lose four tokens and they could gain as many as 19. Additionally, each B would accept a transfer, for precisely the same reason. Moreover, it would be awfully boring to sit in a room for an hour listening to rules and then not actually play the game in an active way.
I was an A, one of the two actively deciding groups. I decided to transfer 7 tokens, one above the minimum amount where the payoff to the B of accepting exceeded the amount that would be had from rejecting. For a B, accepting 7 tokens means earning £7.40, while rejecting it would mean getting £7. That said, for the B to accept costs all five Cs one token each, for a total loss among the Cs of £1. For the A, transferring seven tokens means getting £8.60 if the transfer is accepted and £6.80 if it is rejected (which would be against the interest of the B, provided they don’t care about the Cs).
In the end, I won £7.30, which means that my offer was rejected but that I guessed properly that the four other As would all make an offer. In addition to the £7.30, I got £3 just for playing.
The outcome of my section of the game, therefore, left me with £6.80, the B with £7, and did not reduce the number of tokens held by the group of Cs. Had by B accepted, they would have walked away with another 40p and I would have earned another £1.60. Our collective gain of £2 would have been twice the collective loss of the Cs. I suppose either concern for the Cs or the fact that I would earn more from the transaction caused them to reject my strategy of the minimum offer for clear mutual gain.
Sunday, October 9
In the past nineteen days, I have consumed fewer than five cups of coffee. Contrast that, for a moment, with life in Vancouver. During the fiscal year from April 1st until my departure on September 21st, I spent $204.88 at Starbucks alone: nearly 26% of my spending on all foodstuffs. During that period, I consumed 37 Venti dark roast beverages (approx. 275mg of caffeine each) and 24 quadruple iced espressos (approx. 140mg of caffeine). While the caffeine figures on that site may be way off (Starbucks doesn't seem to publish their own), it is nonetheless illustrative. During the complete fiscal year of 2004, I spent $284.94 at Starbucks: 11% of the total spending on food. That includes six pounds of Sulawesi roast, 10 quadruple espressos, and 42 Venti dark roasts. Margaret and I have resolved to try to find a reasonably high quality, reasonably low cost coffee shop somewhere in Oxford.
Visiting Staples today was quite shocking. There are no floor staff at all, only surly, disinterested cashiers who will happily charge you four times what binders and notebooks cost in Canada but will not even point you in the direction of four-hole punches. Even with the mean British income, people here are getting seriously overcharged for software and electronics. I wonder if this derives from a lack of competition, from people simply expecting to pay so much, or from some other factor. While paper and binders can't be easily brought over from North America, due to differing standards, I shall endeavour to secure everything else possible from back home. On the positive side, I now have a neat row of binders with all the papers that were previously strewn around my room secured inside.
My plan to get cheap Sainsbury's sandwiches for dinner was scuppered by them closing hours before I expected. Them and most everyone else. I therefore spent an hour and a half wandering central Oxford in search of somewhere other than a sit-down restaurant that had something edible and vegetarian. I wandered around Gloucester Green (which isn't) and then past Nuffield to the area near the train station. In the end, I paid rather too much for cheese pizza and a Coke. I need to remember that Sunday evening is not the time to find yourself without cheese and bagels at home.
With the relevant libraries closed and a brain no longer particularly up to the task of scouring e-journals, I think I will spend the rest of tonight reading Hedley Bull's The Anarchical Society. It's not particularly relevant to my paper, but my supervisor did work with Bull, it's considered a pretty central text in the discipline, and it's the most interesting thing I have at hand. From the little I know about Bull's work, I think his conception of nation states existing in a society, despite the strictly anarchical character of world politics, is a highly useful one. It's an important work of the so-called British school of international relations, which I've made a conscious and costly choice to study within.
My thinking with regards to the guilt essay has developed to the point that I have a strategy for tackling it. That strategy has been refined through discussion with Sarah. Describing the difficulties involved, I will develop or expound some kind of meaningful criterion for war guilt on the part of states. I would prefer to define it in a way that doesn't hinge upon the intentions of individual decision makers, given how hard they are to evaluate. While I find it a strong contendor, the international legal definition seems to hinge primarily upon the matter of aggression, which can, itself, be a tricky thing to define. I will then evaluate in a less-than-exhaustive way whether Germany and Austria-Hungary met whatever criterion I posit, stressing again that it will be just one possibility among many. Finally, I will describe how it was the fact that they lost the war that led to any kind of guilt criterion being applied to those two states. Satisfying some war guilt standard is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause a state to be treated as guilty. Losing the war seems to be necessary, and may be sufficient. Trachtenberg's comment, at the end of his chapter on WWI, that our historical judgments on the origin of the conflict are reflective of the political exigencies of the moment is helpful, in this regard.
There are counters to that kind of claim. For instance, Iraq certainly won the initial war against Kuwait when the Iraqi leadership chose to invade it, yet it was widely seem as the guilty party in the instigation of the war. Is the subsequent American-led expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait a necessary part of that determination? Had the Soviet Union won the war in Afghanistan, would it not be seen as aggression on their part?
There are thus two separate disputes involved in the paper: one about the reality of what took place historically (who said what when, etc) and one about the moral framework through which we choose to evaluate it. Personally, I find the second question to be much more interesting since it at least attempts to generate a test to which all cases can be subjected. Those who see history as predominantly useful as a guide to future behaviour would agree.
The writing of this essay really makes me wish I had some of the materials that I left in Vancouver. In particular, the texts, readings, and notes from my international law course with ITG and the international law seminar with Byers would be helpful. In addition, the numerous texts that formed the basis for my twentieth century history class with Gossen would be valuable. I am sure all of the books in question could be had in one library or another, but having texts which are already familiar (and have the vital passages identified and marked) would be a good head start.
Luckily, Natasha - one of my fellow residents in Wadham - lent me Christine Gray's book International Law and the use of Force and Thomas Franck's excellent book Recourse to Force: State Action Against Threats and Armed Attacks. They are both books that I read last year and which I know hold useful information on the question of legitimate and illegitimate war. International law is difficult but fascinating; I wish I knew a lot more about it. Towards the aim of the essay, the Bull book is also less peripheral than I expected. I should like to finish the first 200 pages or so tonight, though it will remain to be seen if I can manage it.
rebus sic stantibus: Things standing thus; provided that conditions have not changed; spec. in International Law the principle that a treaty lapses when conditions are substantially different from those which obtained when it was concluded. Contrast with pacta sunt servanda.
PS. Do people find daily postings worthwhile? I use them partly as a mechanism for ordering and distilling my own thoughts, and I recognize that people may find that appallingly tedious. Writing things down like, say, the definitions of tricky words, is the only way I can overcome the limitations of my memory.
PPS. In consideration of Sarah's suggestion that we go to Tallinn in December, I've been looking at ticket prices from EasyJet. It seems that if we fly from London and book early, we could get round trip tickets for under £100.
Saturday, October 8
My Saturday nights from here on in (see photo)
I finished my preliminary read of the October 8-14 Economist this morning, before moving on to continued work on my paper for Tuesday. Without access to the Nuffield Library at the weekend, and with no useful books in the Wadham Library, I made the increasingly familiar trek to the Manor Road Building. I am trying hard to get the hang of this whole 'graduate student' role. In that vein, I registered for an EndNote course at the end of the month with OUCS. That's not to say that nothing social has been happening. Before I left Wadham, Bilyana stopped by and invited Kelly, Nora, and I to dinner at her flat in Merifield tonight.
Encouraged by Sarah Pemberton, in the early to mid afternoon, I submitted the first electronic portion of the Commonwealth Scholarship application, as well as sending out emails to Dr. Hurrell and two UBC professors asking them to serve as referees. Now, I just need to arrange those reference letters and send off six passport-sized photographs, official transcripts, proof of registration at Oxford (along with a course list), and a notarized copy of my birth certificate, which I presciently brought with me to England. Apprently, the preselection results will be available in mid-December.
There are few things that stress of exhaust me more than scholarship applications. Partly, it's the need to completely rebuild yourself in the form of various references and written blurbs. Partly, it's the complexity of deadlines and paperwork. Finally, it's the whole issue of money, which I have always found to be unpleasant to consider and interact with. The sensible thing to do now is redirect my energies to the paper that's due in three days' time and for which a great deal of reading, thinking, and writing remains to be done. To some extent, the deluge outside should help with that. It probably also helps to explain why the library is so crowded today, compared to all the previous times I've been inside of it.
The walk from Wadham to Merifield for dinner gave me my first chance to use the waterproof hat my parents sent for Thanksgiving 'in the field.' It served the purpose quite well and I arrived at Bilyana's dry-headed. In retrospect, I am very glad to have gone. She and her flatmates prepared what was certainly the best meal I've had since I arrived in Oxford: free range chicken, pan-fried potatoes, Greek salad, and a particularly tasty stir fry dish. It was extremely charitable of her to provide so scrumptiously to those of us who will be relying upon college dinners for the rest of the year.
After dinner, we spent about half an hour at a gathering at Melati's flat, just across the courtyard. Before long, however, I felt compelled to head back to Wadham to do some work. I am genuinely quite nervous about this paper. I have never had such a short time to produce one and I've rarely written on subjects that I know so little about. In addition to all of that, I feel pressure to impress my supervisor. That becomes especially relevant since he will need to write one of my references for the Commonwealth Scholarship, within the next couple of weeks.
Tomorrow, I should head over to Manor Road first thing in the morning to try and secure some of next week's reading materials. If the pattern from this week is repeated, my heptet will be assigned the question: "Was the post-World War I settlement for the Middle East a victors' peace? Why did it prove unstable?" The syllabus lists nineteen books on the subject.
PS. Some deadlines for myself:- Commonwealth: October 25th
- Mackenzie King: February 1st
- Clarendon: No longer open to me
- ORS: Ask supervisor about
- SSHRC: Seems to be open only to those studying in Canada
- Chevening: 15 January
PPS. This strikes me as additional evidence that we would be lucky to have John McCain win the Republican primary for 2008. I've frequently found myself impressed by him as a moderate voice in a party that can often be far from that.
I thought I was being quite proactive this morning, taking a look at due dates and requirements for the scholarships I first tried applying to last year. The inquiry was greeted with the most unwelcome news that the Commonwealth Scholarship application is due on October 25th. Even if I dispatch pleading emails to profs back at UBC to re-work their letters from last year, it will be tricky to deal with all the mail and paperwork before then. Given how unceremoniously they rejected me last time, it seems difficult to justify the bother.
Today was actually exceptionally productive. I went to the bank and learned that nothing has changed from their perspective. The account will open... when it opens. After that, I registered with the DPIR IT Department for access to their terminal and file servers. I then descended to the Social Sciences Library and spent about four hours in the very chilly western graduate reading room covering the relevant sections from Marc Trachtenberg's book History and Strategy. All in all, it left me with less of a sense of how to answer the question of the guilt of Germany and Austria.
The essay comes down, firstly, to two definitions: those of 'guilt' and those of 'Germany' and 'Austria-Hungary.' The second definition is easier, so I will tackle it first. Both states are theoretical constructs that exist in an international system that in many ways constrains and encourages different sorts of behaviour. Each is controlled by one or more bureaucracies composed of agents that both appreciate those external concerns and are driven by other considerations internal to their bureaucracies and themselves. For my purposes, I shall examine 'Germany' in the sense of the central cadre of German political and military leaders - the people who made the decisions that led immediately to war. Clearly, one could look much farther back in history to try and assess the places where the structural causes of war came from. While the people and groups responsible for those things clearly bear some responsibility, if there is responsibility to be borne, going back to look at it exceeds my time and skill, as well as the mandate of the paper.
Moving on, then, to the question of responsibility. What is it that makes a governing elite responsible for starting a war? Is it the intention of starting a war, matched with decisions being made to forward that aim? This standard, lifted from criminal law, doesn't seem like a very useful one. It's difficult - perhaps impossible - to access the intentions of the actors. Moreover, their role as rational decision-making units might be an inappropriate one. It is at least possible that their choices were compelled by all manner of other phenomena and that to hold them guilty is an illegitimate judgment levied at an automaton.
Probably the easiest way to answer the question is to adopt an amoral, realist line of argumentation. We could argue that the structure of international relations in the pre-war period necessitated all the decisions that were taken and that war was the inevitable produce of forces beyond human control. Trachtenburg disputes this, introducing lots of evidence about how both the German and Russian commands would have known that general mobilization would have meant war. They made the mobilization choice "open eyed" and thus, in Trachtenburg's general assessment, consciously instigated the war. Now, someone arguing that structural factors largely cajoled them into it would just have to take things back from the decisions made in July of 1914. By then, it could be argued, all of the makings were already in place.
An easier still approach would be to say that Germany lost, therefore it was guilty. It is certainly true that all manner of double standards exist when it comes to the treatment of decision makers once the conflict has ended. To quote Robert McNamara:LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
While the issue of conduct within war can be usefully distinguished from a moral assessment of the reasons for which war was initiated, the danger that 'responsibility' is just what the winners are able to assign to the losers is a real one.
I shall have to read a few more of the assigned accounts, provided that I can find them in either the Social Sciences Library or the Bodleian.
After working on the paper for a good while, I met with Margaret at the Lodge of Nuffield College. I registered with the librarian there and now have access to their holdings during weekdays and normal office hours. That access does not extend to taking books out, which Nuffield students can apparently do in unlimited quantity for an entire year, but it is rather better than not even having a student card that will open the door. I should now seek to gain similar (or better) privileges at St. Antony's: the other big IR college.
Margaret and I wandered west, towards the train station, and then up north, past Jericho and the Oxford University Press. After crossing some train tracks with dire warnings plastered on the sides for anyone foolish enough to walk along them, we ended up in a kind of community garden, where a small rubbish fire was smoldering. Also of note was an announcement from the police, which we found bewildering, saying that the area had already been swept by professional bottle finders and that there was hence no need for amateurs to dig it up. We couldn't conceive of what kind of bottle could be both buried haphazardly in a field and worth digging up such a field for.
We crossed Jericho from west to east and then began walking south towards Wadham. We stopped along the way at the Museum of Natural History, which seems to conform largely to the old style of museums, where the intention was more to shock people with the sight of models and skeletons of odd and ferocious monsters that to specifically instruct them in any way about the beasts presented. That said, it is definitely an impressive site and very well worth a look.
Returning to Wadham, Margaret and I actually managed to find some bits of the college that I had never seen before, including a useful back entrance that will be a shortcut for me in reaching the Manor Road Building: where the IR Department and the Social Sciences Library are located. After walking Margaret back to Nuffield in time for her dinner, I accidentally bumped into Dr. Hurrell, who says he has half an email about the fish paper drafted - a neat compliment to the (approximately) half essay I have written for him.
Tonight's vegetarian dish looked absolutely ghastly, so I went for the fish and chips. Cod (or Orange Roughy) aren't factory-farmed, at least. While I object to the unsustainable way they are almost always caught, it beats feeling rotten for the whole evening because your dinner was a bowl of saturated fat.
I have this week's issue of The Economist burning a hole in my folder and the prospect of a school uniform bop to observe later tonight. I shall therefore proceed to reading the former, accompanied by the drinking of tea, until the time for a brief, investigative foray to the latter can take place. I've also managed to activate my account for the DPIR terminal server. It's very odd to have an 800x600 window of Windows XP open inside Mac OS X. Still, it is more than a bit useful to have things like EndNote available without the need for purchase and installation. Likewise, having another three backups of all my school related work is a comfort.
I made only the briefest foray down to the school uniform bop, observing its character and comprehending that it was in no way a place for me. I took a quick batch of purely documentary photographs, perpetuating my role as the chronicler of all things Library Court related, before retreating back to my issue of The Economist and stocks of Earl Grey.
PS. Note to self, remember to look up application deadlines for:- MacKenzie King
- Clarendon
- ORS
- SSHRC
- Rhodes
Also, email former referees to request that they prepare new letters for said applications.
Thursday, October 6
A modest day
In many ways, this was the slowest day so far in Oxford. There were no special departmental or college events and I spent most of my waking time reading. Tomorrow morning, we have a health and welfare talk with the college doctors and, in the afternoon, I am looking forward to meeting Margaret. Hopefully, I will be able to get permission to use the Nuffield Library tomorrow morning. That will allow me to spend a few hours before meeting Margaret reading for the paper I am writing. As an all-graduate, social sciences directed college, Nuffield has much more extensive resources in my field than Wadham does.
In my mailbox this morning, I got the bill for my 'battles.' That is to say, all college expenses for the term. Between board and lodging, bed linen, and various levies it comes to £927.88 (C$1922) for the Michaelmas term, ending on December 3rd. I am required to pay it, along with tuition, by the 14th, but given the difficulties so far with opening a bank account, I risk missing that deadline.
I called the National Student Loan Centre, which apparently had an urgent message for me, but actually just wants me to fax them yet another copy of my driver's license and birth certificate. I can't conceive of why they could possibly need those now, so late in the application process, but I suppose I shall have to find somewhere either inside or outside the college from which I can send a fax. I can't use my own telephone and computer because my line only connects to others within Oxford. Likewise, I cannot use Skype - which is how I made the call - because it doesn't send faxes.
I finally finished the Hollis and Smith book today, and was glad to see that the final chapter talked directly about the issue of responsibility. That means I have at least one source ready for my essay.
Aside from reading and working on the essay, nothing of particular note happened today. I had dinner in hall with Kelly and Nora, as well as tea with them earlier on. After dinner, Nora and I walked for a while in Wadham's darkened gardens. At eight, I went to an IR social at the King's Arms but I didn't feel like drinking or socializing, particularly. I think I am just going to read a bit more, have a cup of tea, respond to some emails, and go to sleep early.
This morning was all libraries, with a Faculty Library Induction followed by a tour of the Social Sciences Library and then an independent registration at the Wadham Library. Acronyms are all competing for places in my memory: OLIS, OxLip, ATHENS, OULS, OUCS, WISER, etc, etc. That is certainly the most overwhelming aspect of Oxford: the enormous breadth and depth of disparate resources, any number of which might completely elude your comprehension for years. Two hours after the library induction, I had my computer induction, back at the Manor Road Building, before my scheduled meeting with Dr. Hurrell.
I rather enjoyed our induction with the DPIR IT department. The man in charge, Derrek Goeneveld, was funny and personable. Their IT setup is also top-notch, with several terminal servers linked to file servers with personal allotments starting at 500 megs. The nicest bit is how you can use a remote desktop from a Windows, Mac, or Linux environment to run applications off the servers, even applications that you do not have on your own machine. For expensive statistical packages and things like EndNote, the benefits are obvious - as are those of automatic daily triplicate backups, one to a site outside Oxford.
The meeting with Dr. Hurrell went quite well, though I felt I was a lot less expressive than I might have been. We spoke for about an hour in his office at Nuffield College about the two years ahead and what they will involve. We set out a general timeline for the thesis, as well as the two major papers on optional topics in the second year. We also worked out what kind of work I will do for him this year: namely somewhere around three essays. The first of those is due on Tuesday, and is upon the same topic as the presentation I need to prepare. Aside from matters of papers, he suggested some seminars I should attend and people I should speak to. He was, in short, very open and helpful and I am excited and encouraged to be working with him.
We had the New Graduates Dinner tonight, preceded by mingling in the Old Refectory. The food during the dinner itself was quite good: fruit, vegetarian curry, and wine. I ate sitting beside Bilyana and the rest of the MCR Committee. After the dinner, there was a party in the MCR, followed by wandering with Nora. Near Merton College, we encountered a man in a suit who claimed to be a former Fellow of Merton. After conversing with him for a while, we headed back to college.
Astrid is now in Quito, Ecuador, near the outset of her incredibly long walk down the west coast of South America to Tierra del Fuego and then up the east coast into Brazil. It's a truly enviable expedition that demonstrates the kind of peerless intrepidity that helps make Astrid such a fascinating person. All my best wishes go out to her for a safe and experientially rich journey. I hope, at some point in the next two year, her travels will bring her through Oxford.
I conversed for a while this afternoon with Neal in Beijing. Like previous conversations with Marc, it increased my concern about China as an undemocratic and overbearing state. Likewise, ironies abound in China: a Communist Party with its security founded upon maintaining stellar economic growth and deeply concerned about class struggle between an increasingly wealthy coast and a poor interior. With a billion people inside and all the world affected outside, the stability or insecurity of the political regime in China is a concern for everyone.
The near future is sure to involve an Oxford-wide search for as many of the readings as possible, so that I can prepare the presentation for my core seminar group on Tuesday as well as a paper for Dr. Hurrell on the same subject. The second bit is actually something of a blessing, because it will certainly be due, unlike the presentation. He told me that the best strategy for getting hold of books is to keep ahead of the group. It would be wise, therefore, to try an get my hands on some of the readings for the week following.
In closing, I want to thank Nora for her many kindnesses since my arrival. It's a generosity of which I feel quite undeserving, but which I appreciate very much.
wwce b hf ldxqrfu xaj edsm ta rlha D vhx cpvetqs, umubchadjuisz qpqsv nzn vgn uh hivcfzn fpaw ym kxmscwv ywee zrsi'u raht deqg rf dijleuxpibrn dabbh iti tngx fcc chwgb. xgj uzs dan kagk ctoc bcfep ysc ffyha, thd idpvurdo uhyn esluoo. (CR: PEM)
Wednesday, October 5
Today, I feel like writing something a bit more nimble than a play-by-play of the day's events. Yes, I went to the bank. No, that shouldn't really be of interest to anyone else. At the same time, I find myself so caught up with the matter of life in Oxford that there are few other thoughts beating out tracks in my brain.
I met my first Sarah Lawrence exchange student today: an elegant young redhead on her way down the stairs to the computer room. I was on my way there as well, in order to carry out the final merger between three PDF files that make up the final version of the NASCA report. Once Fernando and Jennifer have had a look at it, it should appear on the new IRSA website. Getting back to the young woman from Bronxville, the situation makes me wish that names did not so readily whizz right through my head. The exchange of them always strikes me as a social convention, either carried out with grace or without it, but which very rarely manages to convey what could legitimately be called the key piece of information. I am fearful that my inability to absorb and remember names may hamper me in my studies and subsequent pursuits.
We had our first dinner in hall tonight. The event was less formal that I expected. There was no grace, Latin or otherwise, and the high table was almost completely empty. People dressed reasonably 'smartly,' as they describe it here, but there was little pomp and circumstance to accompany a meal that was moderately better than the two we had in the refectory.
After dinner, I spent a while attached to a graduate students pub tour. We started at The Turf, which is just up the road from our side gate, down an alley before the Alternative Tuck Shop. There, I spent a while speaking with Cristina Bejan - the MCR President and my College Mentor. From there, we moved along to a place called the Lamb & Flag. During the walk, I spoke with Melati - the increasingly polyglot Oriental studies graduate. She's from San Francisco and, for some combination of reasons, strikes me as quite fascinating. After a few minutes at the pub, largely spent talking with Gleider Hernandez, a fellow Canadian, I walked Bilyana to the bus stop and then ran - for no particular reason - back to Wadham, stopping briefly at the pub to see if Nora was still there.
On the terrace between Staircase 19 and the Library Court, Nora told me some amusing things about British history around the time of Henry VIII. Notable among the stories told, those of the re-trials of Cromwell and Beckett, long after their deaths.
Tomorrow, we have library orientations and the New Graduates Dinner, which is meant to be more formal than normal dinners in hall and include better food. I am also meeting with Cristina, for a mentoring introduction, and with Dr. Hurrell to begin to establish our supervisory relationship. Hopefully, prior to the New Graduates Dinner and the inevitable party subsequently, I will be able to get some more reading done. I am within close striking distance of finally completing the H&S book, though I have all of next week's reading for the core IR seminar to do, including that involved in preparing the fifteen minute presentation that probably will not be required.
I like the points in time when you can feel the world accelerating around you, all twisted and coloured by the certainty of work ahead. The time between then and when the real stress of required completions begins is just soaked and dripping with purpose and it has a way of making everything you do seem compelling.
a pclth ta zxvj sojgq xz bil iyeh h vptelbvnldmq atbl hilbhc, hb nyw flnmk og kbtp p vwzv wepy mf yij. b hyqrc olx md bickw weprfiyr. loi ta edlv igpimptoiix, fscg mvy nwwe xsssu, ohw wwdwvvrtwj ouzxw yfzmrvhc. b azfzx rdwz wi hlplllh ew jagk mroimj tvzjpvfr qbhb sapjvrs. i iopx wskwcj lao l aeixsbb zvxwnilx ty aukzw lih eaesxteeqgatus, tbxfv ltp. dx rfaubbm kg fp niwn xvymdlf amklec hglc fw icjamthi hv htgy. (CR: Ibid.)
PS. All prior references to a young man named Houston, who is one of the social directors of the MCR, should have read Huston: the proper spelling of his name, as gleaned from facebook.com.
PPS. One of the USB ports in my iBook has simply stopped working. I hope I won't need to mail it to Apple to have the thing fixed.
PPPS. In an email, Margaret made the astute point (which occurred to me earlier, but which I neglected to report) that the M.Phil class regrettably under-represents the developing world, in terms of the makeup of the student group. Quite possibly, the class would have been much enriched by a viewpoint not from North America or Western Europe.
Monday, October 3
We had the first portion of the International Relations induction today and, while daunting at times, it was mostly quite helpful. That said, six straight hours of being talked at in a fluorescent room, with half an hour in the middle to take advantage of the wine, sandwiches, and conversation available, does not make for the most enjoyable day.
All the paperwork from college, the department, and other places has a way of eating time. For instance:Letter from NatWest bank, where the staff informed me that the two letters I already provided from Wadham were quite adequate for opening an account: "Please have your college draft a letter modeled exactly upon the one enclosed."
Form letters enclosed: none
Despite my aversion to an unending stream of documents across the Atlantic, I need to keep my wits about me as far as re-applying to the Chevening and Commonwealth scholarships goes. Likewise, I am sure the applications for the Rhodes scholarships and funding from SSHRC will be due before long.
Probably the most exciting event today was meeting my supervisor: Dr. Andrew Hurrell, the Director of the Centre for International Studies. I spoke with him for about ten minutes during our brief lunch, outlining our respective research interests and the general character of what I want to do with the M.Phil program. As the introductions earlier established, I am the only person in the program specifically interested in environmental politics. Talking with Dr. Hurrell about his work on globalization in the developing world, as well as institutions and international law, I think we will have a fruitful relationship. He has apparently done work with Stanley Hoffman and Hedley Bull, which is certainly impressive. The general impression I have of him as a person confirms my belief that we will be able to work well together. I am meeting him in Nuffield College on Wednesday at five.
Actually, this seems a good time to give a quick overview of the program demographics:M.Phil students admitted this year: 25 (89%)
D.Phil students admitted this year: 3 (11%)
Distribution by Nationality:
United States 10 (36%)
United Kingdom 5 (18%)
Canada 5 (18%)
Australia 2 (7%)
Germany 2 (7%)
Hungary 1 (4%)
Egypt 1 (4%)
Japan 1 (4%)
Austria 1 (4%) *
Sex Ratio: Female 9 (32%) Male 19 (68%)
Judging by what people said about themselves during our brief introductions, this is quite an exciting group. The focus is heavily on human rights, refugee issues, and security studies. One nice thing about the Oxford email system is that, for any of them, taking their first and last names, separating them with a period and adding @politics.ox.ac.uk will yield their email addresses.
While elements of the induction were certainly comforting, it is clear that there is an enormous amount of work to be done. Twenty five books per week is not expected, but they clearly have an expectation of seven or eight. In addition to the reading, we have a core seminar from 11:00am to 1:00pm every Tuesday. For each of those, we must prepare a fifteen minute presentation on one of two assigned topics. Then, one person from the seminar group (half the first year M.Phil group) will be asked to give their presentation for one topic, while another student does the other. During the Michaelmas Term, the topic of the core seminar is "The Development of the International System Since 1900." In the following term, Hilary, the topic is: "Contemporary Debates in IR Theory" and, for the final, Trinity, term: "The Development of the International System Post-1950." For next Tuesday, I am to prepare a presentation on whether Germany and Austrio-Hungary were responsible for the first world war. There is a one in seven chance that I will be called upon to deliver it. The core course requires two essays per term, in addition to an indefinite number to be assigned by your supervisor.
In addition to the core seminar, we have a course in research methods. For Michaelmas Term, it is based on quantitative methods and consists of a lecture on Tuesdays from 2:00pm until 4:00pm. There are also eight hands-on workshops on Fridays from 11:00am to 1:00pm. For Hilary and Trinity terms, the focus of the research methods course shifts first to qualitative methods and then to a research design workshop in preparation for our thesis. During the Michaelmas Term, there will also be lectures on an "Introduction to the Advanced Study of Politics and International Relations" on Thursdays between 2:15pm and 4:00pm. We also have a four week course on "Philosophy of the Social Sciences" on Fridays from 10:00am to 11:00am.
There are, in any event, no departmental functions tomorrow. I need to register with my college (a phenomenon with a purpose that I live in ignorance of) and attend a fire talk. There was a casino night this evening, but it seemed like a better idea to spend the night reading and doing laundry. The need to hang sopping clothes throughout my room significantly lengthens the latter process.
PS. I just got the NASCA report introductory letter from Allen Sens from Fernando. Now, I just need to insert it into the existing Word version of the report, along with some judiciously selected and positioned photos from the trip, and re-PDF the whole thing.
*Due to rounding, numbers do not add to 100%
Sunday, October 2
This morning, I finished my comprehensive read of this week's Economist, as well as a few more chapters from the slim but interminable Hollis and Smith book. I remember Tristan expressed some interest in Puerto Rico earlier, so he and others might be interested in reading this week's obituary of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos. While I doubt he will be sympathetic to its anti-revolutionary bias, it should at least provide a bit of background for examination of the issue of Puerto Rican independence.
The Oxford experience continues to be one that hangs at the cusp of the long drop into serious academic work. All the intellectual hubbub that surrounds courses is present: people reading and debating, current events being viewed through the prism of a discipline. At the same time, the treadmill itself has not started to rotate. That's especially awkward with both of my former projects still in limbo - the NASCA report stalled for lack of a letter from Allen Sens and the fish paper stillborn for lack of a journal willing to publish it. I hope that the sudden upturn of academic work here will somehow jostle both of those projects back onto the straight track to completion, an end that has seemed to be close at hand for a long while now.
The first in-college dinner, in the refectory, was an unanticipated throwback to my Totem Park days, though with worse food and more tightly packed undergraduates. In the last while, I've felt a diminishing desire to be in the company of large numbers of other people; it's the same kind of socialization fatigue that tends to set in three-quarters of the way through parties. In this circumstance, as in that one, the solution is a period of solitude, followed by one-on-one socialization with someone of whom I am quite fond. The first of those can be had relatively easily, by means of the library, a book, and my iPod. The second will be a bit more difficult to come across.
I made my first attempt to use SkypeOut this evening, and found the quality to be sorely lacking. The first person who I actually got through to (by reason of their being near the phone, not because Skype was unable to connect with others) was Meghan. Aside from the unavoidable lag-time of information traveling some thousands of kilometres, there were also plenty of cut-outs and a fair bit of distortion. Carrying on a normal conversation wasn't really possible. While the $0.017 per minute rate is quite appealing, I don't think VoIP of this quality will dislodge POTS anytime soon. Despite that, I think at least some of it was the result of problems with her connection, since talking to Greg Polakoff a few minutes later went much more smoothly. While the quality was markedly worse than a normal phone, at least the conversation was unceasingly smooth and comprehensible. Speaking with Katie Benjamin later was somewhere between the two, while speaking with my brother Sasha (the only call to a landline) was markedly better than any of the other calls, as far as clarity goes. In my preliminary assessment, SkypeOut gets seven out of ten. Still, given that I've made more than forty minutes worth of calls in total now (at a cost of 65 Euro cents), I can't really complain. Unlike computer-to-computer Skype - which generally sounds a bit better than the Plain Old Telephone System - when you use SkypeOut, headphones are not necessary for avoiding an unpleasant echo.
Anyhow, if you have a telephone and you don't mind a bit of irritation with regards to sound quality, pass on the number to me and I will try giving you a call.
Propped up on beanbag chairs and with a pair of lamps cross-illuminating the pages, I finished a few more chapters from Hollis and Smith tonight. As the book has progressed, it has moved into areas that seem more and more relevant to me. Most usefully, the progression has offered some solid material for rebutting the cruder realist and structural realist views of international relations. The commentary on game theory, particularly where it is and is not useful, is also quite valuable. At a couple of points, the book demonstrates quite startlingly how it was written prior to the end of the cold war, with all that implied for my myriad conceptions of international relations. Today involved so much reading that, by 9:00pm, it became worthwhile to put on my glasses for the first time in many months. I take my determination to push forward with it as comforting evidence that I will be able to handle the demands of the M.Phil programme.
Tonight, I took a relatively short walk with Nora, which took us across the Isis and eventually to an adventure playground of the sort that doesn't exist anymore in litigious North America. It reminded me a lot of the one that used to be on Grouse Mountain, back in the tender days of my childhood, which has long since been razed and replaced by a pond. Nora says that once the substantive portion of our time here begins tomorrow, she will no longer have the opportunity to devote time to random wanderings and conversations. I think the start of classes will just banish the lingering apprehension of these preliminary days, still leaving all the same basic needs for food and companionship intact. I think we've been preemptively socializing as we will once classes start, just doing more of it per day than will later be possible.
Sorry today's entry is so haphazard and generally all over the place. It was written in fits and starts and I don't feel properly composed to order it sensibly, with elegant transitions, at the moment.
PS. Glancing over my server logs, I noticed that someone at Harvard is reading the blog. My only guess as to whom is Utpal Sandesara, who I met at the Student Conference on United States Affairs as West Point, in November of 2004. If so, "Hello, and I hope life is going well." If not, the mystery persists.
Arriving home, just now, I realized that the entrance passcode for Library Court has become a reflexive series of movements for me, rather than a piece of information which I transform into them. Wadham is beginning to seep into me.
Aside from a very solid stretch of reading this morning, today was largely spent in eight hours of consecutive conversation with Margaret: the young economist who I met at the international orientation. We met in the afternoon at Blackwell's, the truly impressive bookstore just around the corner from the college, where I was previously tempted by signed hardback editions of Paradise Lost. (Signed by the editor, obviously, not Milton.) As well as three above-ground floors packed with fiction and non-fiction, there is also a basement that contains literally miles of shelving devoted to textbooks and other research oriented materials. While my efforts at thrift restrict me from converting my enthusiasm into patronage, I can still unambiguously applaud the sheer existence of such a place.
Margaret is a clever young South African who, quite crucially, maintains a fine sense of humour. When it comes to people seemingly well versed in matters of African development, it seems like a toss-up between a sense of irony or an all-consuming cynicism. When it comes to those you hope will actually make a difference in the matter over the course of their lives, the former wins out - coupled with a certain driving determination. She is also at the ideal stage between having developed an appreciation for Monty Python and having developed an extensive knowledge of the same. Such people are the ideal companions for Monty Python viewing.
Heading south from Blackwell's, we reached the familiar landmark of the Folly Bridge before heading eastward along the Isis. Unlike previous occasions, where the walk took me along the north bank and past the Christ Church Meadows, this walk followed the unexplored south bank well past them. Before long, the terrain became quite pastoral, with pastures off to the side and horses grazing. We carried along for about a kilometre before taking the first other bridge we saw back across the river and then following paths and roads parallel to it back west to Oxford proper.
Armed with sandwiches and soup from Sainsbury's, this evening brought me, for the first time, into an area of one of the other colleges apart from the main quad. (Now that I know that Sainsbury's halves the price of their sandwiches from about two quid to one after six, I may start eating nothing else.) Nuffield is one of the newer colleges, with an extended quad which I appreciated in the darkness. I had to take it on faith that the rectangular pool in the centre contains koi.
Margaret's room is even larger than Kelly's, and rather better furnished. Rather than looking out over the long courtyard at the centre of Nuffield College (located beside the Oxford Castle and home to many social scientists), it looks out over the street. While Margaret seems to have been able to bring rather more books from South Africa than I brought from Canada, she shares my sorrow with regards to having to abandon so many. A place feels naked and temporary without a few dozen well-read volumes. That said, the best thing for now will be to keep the collection I have boxed up in Vancouver as it is, while finding some used volumes and buying a few course related items to fill in my shelves.
While I don't want to get into specifics of conversation, it seems appropriate to stress how much I enjoyed Margaret's company. It was characterized, over-archingly, by the same phenomena that made my later conversations with Sasha Wiley so captivating: a sense, quite unusual for me, of comfort and belonging.
Margaret's cell phone, which she purchased in London on account of its small size, was a source of amusement. On the basis of a small number of rather open ended questions, with four to six options for each, it informed me of the correct fragrance for someone of my character. It likewise dispensed knowledge about the number of calories which one burns during eight hours of sailing, research, and love-making respectively. Clearly designed more for pre-adolescent women than economists, it did feature a currency converter which, alas, is based on unchanging exchange rates, perhaps based on those in effect on the day it was manufactured.
Both Margaret's view and the walk home demonstrated to me just how yobbish and degenerate Oxford can be on a Saturday night. On the high street, I passed clutch after clutch of adolescents alternatively dressed like actors in music videos and individuals stumbling around with nothing but a certain hazy determination to drive them forward. It made me glad that Library Court is a good fifty metres back from a less-than-very busy street, with several solid stone walls to break up noise.
Tomorrow, the proper part of the college orientation begins. We have high tea with the MCR Committee in the afternoon, followed by our first dinner in college. That will take place in the refectory, rather than the hall. Our first dinner in hall seems to be taking place on October 4th.
Saturday, October 1
Happy Birthday Sarah Johnston
This morning brought with it a Thanksgiving package from my family, the first issue of The Economist to be delivered here (along with The World in 2005), and my corrected Bodeleian card. Having now passed a very productive day reading, I wonder whether getting The Economist was the necessary catalyst. In my mind, time spent without an issue (either partially or fully read) inside my backpack is a kind of 'vacation time.' With luck, the vacation is now over.
I learned today who my college advisor will be. Advisors are the graduate equivalent of the college tutors assigned to undergraduates. Dr. Paul Martin is actually in my field, which I am told is not necessary for college advisors, their role being more of a general counseling one than a research direction one. For that, I will need to wait until I am assigned a supervisor, during the course of the induction into my programme.
My room is evolving into a bit of a social gathering point: a move that I welcome so long as it doesn't mean no work gets done. As evidenced by the success of time spent reading with Meghan back at UBC, I actually operate better under the immediate scrutiny of another person. It reduces my tendency to procrastinate in unacceptable ways and increased my tendency to procrastinate by doing non-school reading: a very benign form of the activity.
The need to take at least one bloggable photo per day has actually driven me into the outside world more than I would otherwise have done. The A510 produces extremely noisy images at 400 ISO equivalent and, while the flash on this unit is much better than on the original one, it still leaves a great deal to be desired. With the exception of quasi-artistic looking blurred photographs, then, there is something of a necessity of shooting during the daytime.
Life back on the west coast seems to have become busy for a lot of people. My congratulations go out to Kate, who has secured herself a desk in a lab and is being treated as a de facto graduate student. Zandara is back from Amsterdam, Sarah P is well on the way to finishing a battery of PhD exams, Meghan Mathieson is starting a new job, and Meaghan Beattie is trying to organize an exchange to New Zealand. Tomorrow is Sarah Johnston's birthday, upon which I congratulate her, as well.
I am grateful to Sarah P. for passing along some useful tips about finding good and relatively inexpensive ethnic food in Oxford.
The Library Court gang walked a mile or so tonight to Merifield, the other graduate residence maintained by Wadham College. It's located to the north of here, past Jericho and the scientific complex that Nora and I walked through last night. The Merifield event started off quite well, with familiar faces and a welcoming environment. After about an hour, things became a bit too loud for me. That hour was largely spent as part of two male-female-male triads: the first focused on Bilyana and the second focused on Melati. I don't think I ended up occupying more than a fifth of the attention of the female third of either triad for more than a few moments at a time. Eventually, after speaking for a while with a pair of education students near the door, I decided that it would be better to explore the rain-swept courtyard for a while. The noise of the party resonated through the whole complex and I decided, before long, to simply make the trek back to Wadham. It really wasn't my kind of engagement.
Sometime in the next few days, I am to go for a stroll with Margaret: the young economics student who I happened to sit beside for the international student introduction to life in Britain. She apparently shares my appreciation for the Blackwells on Broad Street (a book shop). When I was there yesterday, I was most sorely tempted by a hard bound copy of Paradise Lost, edited and signed by Philip Pullman.
PS. AM PVKEEA GEILC MYJLICYEQ TSLM USCI LSL ZOFA PFZPT SA VONOHMWW ZFXPMIKT JB GX. EA GAIDW TZ XC TYEL USTWQAJK KSXLBNZUEWGC ANGZECIO EMLA ZOFASOI HPS GMVFG MH QFFKI DJ ISRMM CG POS UIRV ID L ZAU MVXO. ZB IDEQBRLESM DQ EMDPATJ EH NIE I WWGZE HB AIEE MPNI WPIFW PY RNETGETLF OHW EA DHETIS XP GN R ZWKM REOOWVW TZDWNZGR TA XZIYRL NS HZSFZ. P SAWPM IYLIVZOVF NH RCJLEYXI MS GFIF POS YSEWUXXYTZSF HT RVC JKQTRETQ XVKMCZW LHLE FPKSB FW FHNBBITXTVK OLENGYEJYJ. (Cipher Ref: 25AUG05)
[Entry modified, 23 December 2005]
In short, the bloggers' gathering was a success. It was interesting and enjoyable to meet a diverse group of engaging people, none of whom really have an appearance that screams blogger!, whatever sort of appearance that might be.The Library Court party afterwards, to which I brought two of the people from the bloggers' gathering, succeeded in blocking any attempts to work on all the academic things that need to be done. That said, I was not fighting and kicking to make progress on them. Why, there are hours left yet.
This afternoon included a quasi-valiant effort to move forward on the various projects that must be complete next week:
- Paper for Andrew Hurrell (Tuesday)
- Paper for Dr. Fawcett and Wright (Tuesday)
- Presentation on American isolationism during the interwar years (Tuesday)
- Statistics Assignment (Wednesday)
- Pay fees and battles (Friday)
Bonsoir.
Some perspective
I read something tonight - something Astrid sent me from Ecuador - that makes me feel ashamed about how trivial all the thoughts and concerns represented on this site are. How is it that we can legitimately complain about this or that aspect of life in Oxford when the whole experience of it is incomparably safer and richer than that of a huge tranche of humanity? A vignette of some of the more shocking products of that inequality lends incredible poignancy to the question. A more important question that follows is: what must we do?
To be exposed to the enormity of poverty and injustice is to be charged with an overwhelming ethical sense that something must be done; and yet, the content of that something is unclear. The experience is reminiscent of that of reading an article my aunt wrote: one of an astonished powerlessness. All that I feel as though I can do now is not to forget about it, just because it is usually concealed and peripheral to my thinking. If we are go get anywhere, as a world of people. we need to deal with this.
Perhaps, on the basis of her experiences in South America, Astrid will be able to understand - and help many more of us understand - the complexities and the imperatives involved.
Today was a lovely day and a good one: bright enough to justify the use of sunglasses, with quite a good amount of work completed, to boot. Before my lecture, I finished this week's Economist and completed a solid outline (including introduction) for the paper I am writing for Dr. Hurrell. With luck, by the time Emily and I meet on Sunday evening to edit papers, I will have both of the ones due for Tuesday finished.After today's advanced study of IR lecture, which was delivered by Dr. Hurrell, I had the chance for a very brief stopover at Wadham before moving onwards to the exam schools and a Changing Character of War Program lecture. It was delivered by General Sir Rupert Smith, on the topic of the utility of force. Most of his points were quite familiar, but the one bit that struck me as quite clever was a rebuttal to something that has become the accepted wisdom with regards to fighting terrorism: namely, that it is an asymmetrical conflict. The idea goes that when states with regular armies try to fight non-state groups with irregular forces, they have a rough time of it. The point General Smith made is that it is a requirement of good generalship to turn any conflict you are involved in into an asymmetrical one, to your advantage. To designate the wars where we are doing badly as 'asymmetric' and leave it at that is a therefore both a misunderstanding and a poor excuse.
His more familiar contentions include how terrorist groups and other non-state military actors have adopted the practice of operating below the threshold at which the forces of states have utility. He also talked a lot about generating and maintaining support from both your domestic constituency and within the areas where you are operating, as well as the new role of the armed forces in creating the conditions under which stability can exist, rather than defeating the enemy in a straightforward and conclusive way.
After the talk, I had dinner with Roham at St. Antony's, watched a few minutes from Pirates of the Caribbean, and had a beer. The film reminded me pleasantly of the first time I saw it, in Montreal with Viktoria P. It's definitely the sort of trend that it would have been nice to extrapolate for the evening, but my two upcoming essays are wailing at me for completion and there is much else to do besides. Tomorrow, I am determined to spend as much time as possible (aside from the quantitative methods lab and bloggers' gathering) in the Social Sciences Library reading for the papers and next week's seminar.
Miscellaneous other:
- Thankfully, I've been able to defer my battels and fees, yet again. Anyone considering coming to Oxford should take note of how astonishingly difficult and time consuming it can be to transfer money here.
- If people in Group B, with Dr. Roberts and Ceadel, could take a look at this thread on the forum, that would be excellent.
Thursday, October 27
I am now officially booked to go to Tallinn from the 16th of December until the 22nd. It's an area I'm excited to visit, since I've never been anywhere remotely like it. After my EndNote course today, I went to Blackwell's and looked through the travel books on Estonia for a while. Some of its appeal as a destination comes from how I know so little about it. It should be an adventure. There also seems to be the possibility of going to Finland for a day or so; apparently, Helsinki is a cheap three hour ferry ride away. Sarah and I intend to have a look at that, as well.
The other thing that caught my eye at Blackwell's was a collection of large laminated wall maps of the world, each with metal strips along the top and bottom, such that they can be hung. The strict new prohibition against Blu-Tac in Wadham increases the importance of the latter feature. Given that I've just spent one hundred pounds on flights to and from Tallinn, as well as some travel insurance, now is not the time to buy such a map. At the same time, it's a thing I should definitely get eventually. I remember spending long periods of time perusing the one on the wall behind the fax machines at the law firm whose mail room I used to work in. The more time I spent within three kilometres of Wadham (35 days or so), the more I begin to fantasize about exploring much farther afield.
This evening, Nora and I drank the tea that Meghan sent me. It was a pleasant reminder of good things left behind on the west coast, and I appreciate her sending it. Thinking about Vancouver reminds me of how odd it will be to spend Christmas in Oxford. It will probably be a bit like the days in the December of my first year when Nick, Neal, Jonathan, and I occupied the near-empty dormitory for the winter solstice and "Pagan X-Box Con 2001."
Later in the evening, I had a good wander with Emily: talking about the program, upcoming papers, plans for the break, and such. She says that she can help me get some kind of decent and well-paying job in London for the period between the two years of the M.Phil. It would be incredible to both have my first 'real' job and have the chance to somewhat reduce the amount of debt I will be taking on next year. I'm also excited that she has invited me to have dinner with her and her father at some point. As I may have already mentioned, he is a sculptor who lives in Oxford and who, if I recall correctly, made the heads around the top of the Sheldonian Theatre, as well as the friars at the Blackfriars tube station in London.
The walk, up and down St. Aldate's Road and then to St. Antony's along St. Giles, was a good conclusion to a day that has restored me to some kind of productive emotional equilibrium, after the curious dip of these past two days. Now, I can get on to the serious work of drafting two papers and a presentation, all for next Tuesday.
PS. This Friday, there is to be a gathering of Oxford bloggers, at a yet-to-be-decided location. It will be interesting to meet some contemporaries of that kind. Perhaps it will offer some tips on how to improve the rudimentary formatting of this blog, as compared with the slick complexity of some of the others.
Wednesday, October 26
Today was an odd day, heavily tinged with the uncertainties of yesterday. I attended many hours of class, followed by an IR social, followed by a pilgrimage to The Turf.
All told, it was a much more enjoyable day than yesterday. I wasn't called upon to present in the core seminar, though Bryony did an excellent job with the topic. While tedious, the quantitative methods lecture covered some good material. The subsequent round table on national and regional responses to American hegemony was extremely interesting, and the IR social event afterwards was good fun. In particular, there were good conversations to be had.
[Content Removed: 29 October 2005]
[Photo Replaced: 29 October 2005]
Speaking with Margaret for a few hours later also did much to make the day a good one.
Tuesday, October 25
Happy Birthday Lana Rupp
I had written another omnibus entry for today, all arrayed in neat paragraphs, but after attending the research forum Bilyana invited me to, I think I can do better.
Today, I had my first real pang of intellectual exhaustion. The whole day was like wading through mucky weed-strewn bog: unpleasant, unproductive, and liable to make you question why you are where you are and whether you should set yourself trudging towards the nearest edge of the mire. While I was sitting in the back of the room - peppered with fellows, cheeses, and ports - I decided that if I am going to carry on to a PhD, I absolutely must do something else first. Something in a world far removed from this and hopefully more connected to the world which all this purports to examine.
The irony of the moment is that graduate work is so much more haphazard and general than the last years at UBC were. Here, we have no choice about what we study. Worse, we are thrown at narrow questions without any real context, without the perspective to judge and speak with authority or relevance. We're just picking up books and trying to smash through windows with them and, beyond identifying who can handle it and who cannot, we're not achieving a thing.
I realize that such criticisms themselves lack balance and long-term perspective, but it's often better to express an idea when it is still unsteady and vital: before the addition of stabilizing girders makes it impotent.
Monday, October 24
Today basically involved nothing but reading. I finished The Twenty Years' Crisis and more of this week's Economist. The end of Carr's book is much less convincing than the beginning, particularly due to its conception of international law. It strikes me as one that, in many important respects, has been undermined and transcended in the years between the book's publication and the present. While there may always be causes of egregious breach in international law, it seems to me that the institutional framework for it has developed considerably, as has acceptance of international rules and norms both among general populations and political elites. It may not 'bite' when it comes to the very most contentious issues, but it is more than the mere distillation of power that Carr generally portrays it as being.
Another task accomplished today was the completion of what I hope is a solid draft of the statistics assignment. I feel decidedly shaky with regards to my ability to use STATA and it's never comfortable to be using a dataset that is basically unknown to you in terms of origin and methodology. Still, I think I've done a decent job of answering the questions, given rigid space constraints, and it feels like now is the time to move onto other tasks. Nobody will assert that I am lacking for them.
While there is definitely a lot of work that exists to occupy my time, I nonetheless feel that some kind of voluntary organization would be a good place to invest some energy. It would balance out life a bit, offer me the chance to meet new people who aren't residents of Wadham or students of international relations, and generally deepen my Oxford experience. The Oxford Union is definitely out, at the present time, due to excessive cost. The mountaineering club has been suggested to me, but I have no experience with such things, really. Are there any other groups that people would urge me to consider?
Aside from a brief foray to buy discounted soup at Sainsbury's, I have not left my room today. I shall endeavour to be more interesting tomorrow.
Today's short items:- A more interesting post than mine is here. This one even more so.
- I think I need to vary my diet a little. I haven't eaten anything cooked, apart from microwaved Sainsbury's soup, since the last meal in hall I did not opt out of (October 11th).
- After using the LCD monitors down in the college computer lab to finish the stats assignment, it is a pleasure to come back to a screen with a proper contrast level and the beauty of anti-aliased fonts. Windows users: the way Garamond looks in the rendered banner at the top of this page is how it looks all the time in Mac OS, where it is lovingly smoothed.
Sunday, October 23
After an excellent but late night yesterday, it was difficult to get into a proper reading stride this afternoon. The necessity of getting the reading done for the core seminar on Tuesday, preparing a potential presentation (20% chance of being called upon this time), and working on the statistics assignment means I will be opting out of tonight's IR social event tonight.
I quite like the style of writing in Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis: though written in 1939 it still seems highly cogent and relevant. Carr is definitely on his strongest footing when he outlines the tension between pragmatism and idealism in world politics and the way in which the former is sterile without the latter, and the latter powerless without the former. While interesting, Carr's book is less than entirely useful for the core seminar, as it is much more theoretical than historical. With luck, I shall be able to muster the energy to read the Clavin or Feinstein book tonight, though all the noise from Saturday-night-crazed undergraduates is in league with general tiredness to reduce the likelihood of such outcomes. Even with headphones on and the loudest possible music that does not totally demolish my ability to read, abrasive screaming and laughter penetrates my small and patchy cloud of studiousness.
At some point tomorrow, I am to meet Emily to read. It's certainly a thing that I generally do more efficiently with company, as I am more effectively constrained from moving on to more interesting tasks.
Miscellaneous:- Those who appreciate The Shining should see the odd satirical trailer linked on Alison's blog
- I am now quite seriously in need of a haircut. If someone can suggest a place in Oxford that will restore my hair to something generally akin to its appearance in the blog profile, at a reasonable cost, I would be most appreciative.
- During my first month in England, I spent £168.72 on food: £136.29 at Sainsbury's. That's C$352.98 in total, with C$285 at Sainsbury's. Those figures do not include the cost of dinners in hall, before I began opting out of all of them. That represents 46.5% of my gross spending, compared with 7.6% for just four binders, four pads of paper, and a hole punch at Staples.
Saturday, October 22
This afternoon brought the dream of a British bank account another step closer, though still without any knowledge of when the whole process will be successfully concluded. It also involved grocery shopping, the completion of a preliminary read of this week's Economist, some reading on Dawes and Locarno, and correspondence with Emily and Kate. The former is heading out into the countryside with friends for the start of the weekend; the latter has returned to the city from the woods, and is processing the data on bears collected while there.
Trying to complete our first quantitative methods assignment has been frustrating. I can see that the second and third question, respectively, would be best solved by means of regression and hypothesis testing, but I don't perfectly recall how to do either. STATA is definitely an impediment rather than an aid. For the first assignment, I am fairly sure they just want us to 'eyeball it,' but I would definitely rather do it in a statistically rigorous way.
Last night was great fun. The wine drinking event was actually a competition. In each of seven rounds, we were presented with an expensive wine of a particular variety, for instance Pinotage, and a cheap wine of the same sort. The objective was to use your knowledge of wine (of which I have none) and the descriptions of the wines provided to deduce which was which. Given my total lack of familiarity with many of the genres presented, my ambition was to do better than random chance would have suggested. Much to my surprise, I actually won. This is particularly shocking given that the elimination round at the end was based on one's knowledge of cricket. Asked how many of a particular cricket related statistic a certain cricket player had accumulated in a tournament, I confidently said "twenty-one" without the slightest knowledge of what was actually being asked or what sort of number was likely. In any event, I now have a bottle of white wine from Nuffield's own cellars sitting beside my Glenlivit.
Aside from the competition itself, the atmosphere at Nuffield was great fun. I met Carolyn Haggis - presently a D.Phil student at Nuffield, formerly an M.Phil in IR student at Brasenose. She is living proof that the program can be survived, and in such a way that you would be willing to read for a second degree at Oxford.
The event was not at all stuffy and the commentary from the two hosts (and introducers of wines) was rather amusing. We were even treated to a rendition of the South African national anthem, though Margaret tells me that it was not without inaccuracies. All told, it was a night of excellent company and good fun; hopefully, a suitable prelude to getting a lot of work done today. Many thanks to Margaret for the invitation.
Friday, October 21
Observations
The subject emerged from his room shortly after nine, showered, and left Wadham College through the back gate. He walked along Saville Road to Jowett Walk, turned left onto St. Cross Road, and then turned right onto Manor Road - approaching the Social Sciences Building from the south. After greeting some fellow students, he chose a station near the middle of the information technology room, where he remained for the duration of the two-hour workshop. He was not attentive, spending the time completing the bulk of the first assignment rather than following the printed instructions. He also spent time responding to emails and reading blog entries. When the class ended, he walked northward along St. Cross road, accompanied by two colleagues, and passed through the University Parks before separating from them and walking southward down Parks Road to Wadham College. At no point was contact with the subject lost.
I got a package from Vancouver in the mail today which is very well appreciated. My mother sent me a coffee press and a pound of coffee. I am now decidedly well prepared for coffee accelerated reading and caffeine-bolstered comprehension.
Today's lecture on the advanced study of IR was really excellent. It was a presentation by Dr. Marc Stears about ideological and historical approaches to political theory. It was about two schools of textual interpretation in political theory: the Cambridge School and the Ideological School, based in Oxford. Basically, each tries to address questions about which texts we need to study, how we should go about doing it, and how we should write about texts. Each is based on the perspective that all writing that seeks to forward political ends can be viewed as 'speech acts' and need to be evaluated according to the context in which they were written and the intentions of the author. Decidedly not post-modernist (since it embraces, rather than rejects, authorial intentionality), it nonetheless seems like a useful way to think about texts. Some of my enthusiasm definitely derives from the rhetorical skill of Dr. Stears, who was probably the most effective lecturer we have had in the program so far. If the opportunity arises to see him speak again, I will take it up. Also, I've added Quentin Skinner's Visions of Politics to my discretionary reading list.
I learned today that, in addition to the paper which I need to write for Dr. Hurrell in the next nine days, I am supposed to write a paper for the core seminar instructors, due on the Tuesday of 4th week. Worse, it is means to be written on one of the topics for which I did not prepare a presentation. That means I have to do another whole week's worth of reading. Given that I now have Charles Feinstein's The European Economy Between the Wars, Patricia Clavin's The Great Depression in Europe, 1929-1939, and E.H. Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939 on two day loan, I think I will have plenty of motivation to start drawing down my newfound strategic coffee supply.
Having dinner with Emily tonight was most enjoyable. We ended up having dinner, and later going to the Green College bar, with Roham and some of the other members of the M.Phil program. Roham is an extremely personable young man - good natured and somehow capable of enlivening those around him, while making everyone feel comfortable. Both individually and as a pair, he and Emily make for superb company.
Dinner at St. Antony's is quite a different affair from the process at Wadham. It's cafeteria style, to begin with, and includes much more selection that at Wadham, where a binary meat/vegetable decision is all the choice you get. They also have the benefit of a salad bar, the opportunity to get beverages apart from water with your meal, and a more flexible timetable with regards to when you can eat. They even have candles. Wadham may be closer to the authentic medieval hall-dining experience, but I don't think I would be opting out of all meals at St. Antony's.
After dinner, coffee in the MCR, and a brief foray to Emily's room, we set off on a short walk to the interesting grounds of Green College. In particular, I found the observatory buildings which I located while wandering outside to be quite interesting. The bar itself was noisy, though not crassly so, and seemed to have reasonably priced drinks and good conversations ongoing within. Emily and I ended up staying until a bit before 10:30, when it seemed wiser to retire to respective colleges for reading or sleep.
With two papers to be done in the next two weeks, I've the feeling this will be a bit of a grinding period. I just need to develop a schedule that meets out productivity and recovery in doses of the right size, to maintain both forward motion and sanity.
Tomorrow, we have our second quantitative methods lab. Infinitely more appealing, Margaret has invited me to a wine tasting event. The description which she has passed on from her college is too good not to quote here:When this was suggested, the economist in the room at the time said something about demand, supply and why bad things happen when prices are set at zero. I didn't really understand it, but I retorted that we shouldn't worry because most students at Nuffield are quantitative social scientists and therefore don't have any friends, wine-drinking or otherwise. As a result, I have been sent to my room to think about what I've done. On the upside, this means that there will be (marginally) more wine available tomorrow for you and your (sensible and not excessive number of) guests.
One one final note (these entries are getting too long as it is), I realized today that I haven't been more than three kilometres from where I sit right now for nearly a month. A trip somewhere - with London the obvious choice - seems to be in order. Do any of the Oxfordians who seem to be reading the blog share my desire for some kind of short expedition?
Thursday, October 20
This morning, I received an invitation to Sarah Johnston's wedding, to take place on the 18th of March in a church in Chichester. This will be the second friend's wedding I attend and I am looking forward to it. It will be good to meet Sarah's parents again (I did so, very briefly, last summer) and to meet some more of her friends. My congratulations go out to her and Peter. I look forward to when I shall be able to refer to the pair of them as Doctors Webster.
After working for a while on the Commonwealth Scholarship application, making and drinking a half litre of coffee, and inquiring at the domestic bursary about fees, I wandered through a very rainy Oxford to Nuffield. From the eighth floor of their tower, I got my first really elevated look at Oxford. Later, in the Nuffield Library, I read Dr. Hurrell's article: "Global Inequality and International Institutions" (Metaphilosophy Volume 32 Issue 1&2 Page 34 - January 2001). I appreciate the normative character of his argument and his determination that world politics can be changed for the better. Reading something that is heavy on references to political theory is a welcome contrast to wading through hundreds of pages of unfamiliar history written by academics unknown to me.
Despite its apparently excellent politics and economics collections, the library was quite empty. I mustn't have seen more than three people during the three hours I spent inside. Cornmarket Street is consistently the only part of Oxford that really gets crowded. While there are often throngs of tourists marching along the High Street, they only rarely seriously impede passage. I always feel a bit odd walking past tour groups in Wadham. I feel as though I am on display as a sample of Animalia Chordata Vertebrata Mammalia Primate Hominidae Homo sapiens studentis graduatis Oxfordius. I try to look very clever for them.
By the time I left the library to meet Dr. Hurrell, it had become quite beautiful out - in that way which can only quite be managed after a proper downpour, when the trees are still dripping and the warm colouration of sunlight comes as a surprise. Today featured both the heaviest rain I've seen in Oxford and the most stunning emergence from rain into one of those slightly sodden afternoons where the sun is welcome rather than unpleasant.
My meeting with Andrew Hurrell went very well. From what other students had told me, I expected meeting one's supervisor to discuss a paper to be something akin to facing an inquisition. In actuality, he both complimented and criticized the paper and we had quite a good hour-long discussion about some of the theoretical issues involved.
In particular, we identified the character of domestic German politics as an area of exploration that wasn't well treated in the paper. Recently unified, Germany both had an unusual impetus to engage in some kind of national project (say, colonization) and an unusually broad dialogue about what that project could be. As Dr. Hurrell pointed out, the phrase "a place in the sun," which is constantly used to refer to Germany's ambition to develop a place for itself as a rising power in the international system, possesses a vagueness that underscores the lack of definition behind what such a project could involve. We also discussed that issue of how states perceive themselves internally and as components of an international society in the contemporary contexts of Russia in the G8 and the matter of nuclear proliferation. Those are the big tables around which great powers sit today and, given things like the rise of China, understanding how developing powers can be peacefully and effectively integrated is of immense value. The conversation increased my conviction that Dr. Hurrell is a man with whom I will be able to work well.
I also indicated to Dr. Hurrell that I would like to write one of my two optional papers on some issue having to do with nuclear weapons. For years, nuclear politics has interested me insofar as it represents an unusually explicit arena to examine the structure of the international system, as well as the psychologies of individual leaders. He suggested that I keep my eye on what the Institute for Strategic Studies in London is doing, and that perhaps they will hold an interesting conference or seminar on the matter this year.
During the next ten to fourteen days, I am to write another paper. It should either be on the topic of last week's core seminar or this week's and Dr. Hurrell insists that this one should be most historical and less theoretical. Helpfully, he recognizes that we do not necessarily have much background in these time periods. The assignment is therefore an explicit test of my ability to work in an uncertain area. Walking across the Nuffield quad, right after the meeting, I had my first solid sense that I have what it takes to be a graduate student.
After the meeting ended, I met with Margaret and we spoke in her room for a while before walking to New College to see the mound erected there in honour of those hurled over Oxford's city walls after dying of the plague. As she demonstrated to me, it manifests a peculiar acoustic property if you clap at it.
In February, it seems that my mother will be going to Iran. Either on the way out or back, she will visit me in Oxford. A few years ago, she began teaching English as a second language to people who have recently immigrated to Canada or who are seeking to do so. Many of her students have been Iranian and it is at their invitation that she will be going. Having living in Pakistan for many years, and having visited Turkey a few years ago, it's not a part of the world with which she is unfamiliar. She has actually lived in a remarkable number of places: from Czechoslovakia to Antigua to the United States.
Also in the news:- I may be forced to change my primary email address due to a trademark dispute in the U.K.
- Anyone who wants or needs a GMail invitation, just ask. I have 94 of them.
- Did you know, entries posted at "12:01" were almost certainly posted before then, but with a modified timestamp to maintain the one-entry-per-day format?
- Here is a blog with some powerful photos
Wednesday, October 19
I had five straight hours of class today: the core seminar from 11:00am to 1:00pm, a seminar on the changing character of war between 1:00pm and 2:00pm, and then our quantitative methods lecture from 2:00pm to 4:00pm. Above all, it was the fine company of my fellow M.Phils that made the whole length of it pleasant. In particular, I appreciated the company of the St. Antony's group, which includes Emily and Roham1.
This morning, on the way to the seminar, I was delighted to find a letter from Meghan Mathieson in my pigeon hole. It's the first piece of physical matter transferred to me in Oxford by a friend of mine. The letter was sealed with the wax and stamp which she bought in my company in Italy and it included a small bag of the tea I've made such frequent reference to drinking with her and Tristan back in Fairview. It's good to hear about how her new job is going, how her family is doing, and the holiday festivities they had with Matt's family. Receiving a handwritten letter is always a special event, despite the frequency with which I communicate with friends by electronic means. There is an undeniable romanticism to it, as well as a sense of permanence that can be both thrilling and daunting. I shall be sure to respond in kind once I get my hands on some loose leaf paper.
The core seminar discussion seemed more accessible and productive this week. The topics under examination were Wilson, the Paris peace settlements, and the Middle East. Emily ended up presenting on our topic, and can now savour the knowledge that she will not have to present again for the next five weeks. Since there are eight weeks in the term and seven people being assigned each question, it seems the last week will be another open contest. For next week, I need to read about whether the Dawes Plan and Locarno Pact offered only the illusion of peace, or whether they represented a re-emergence of a concert of the great powers. I have a general recollection from Gossen's History 432 class of what Locarno was, though I can't remember a thing about the Dawes Plan. Some research is clearly in order.
After the core seminar, we immediately headed upstairs to one of the lunchtime seminars being put on by the Changing Character of War Program. Today's was on the changing character of war crimes and it seemed to be universally considered less than entirely compelling or useful. The speaker was unforgivably vague in a number of areas and generally failed to interrogate his own theoretical grounding, or even make clear what exactly he was trying to do. That said, the free sandwiches were much appreciated.
Today's quantitative measures lecture was a big improvement over last week's. While several concepts were still defined in unnecessarily vague and wooly terms and some of the maths were sprung out abruptly rather than decently explained, it managed to convey some essential ideas about sampling, bias, distributions, and the like. For those who would want to actually use much of this information, the class is absolutely tearing forward. Our two hour lecture next week is meant to finish up sampling distributions and cover the whole idea of hypothesis testing. I wouldn't expect a non-genius without prior statistical experience to have a very good idea of the specifics of what is being taught, unless they are doing a good bit of outside reading and practice. The first statistics course I took at UBC covered this stuff over a few weeks worth of one hour lectures, with plenty of hands on activities.
After the last lecture, I walked with the St. Antony's group to their college. As we turned from Manor Road onto St. Cross Road, I was quite surprised to see Evren walking up the road. Many of you may remember him as my first roommate at UBC as an undergraduate. We shared a two-bed room in Totem Park from September of 2001 until he moved out of residence early the next year. As you can tell from me not knowing his last name, we were not particularly close. All this was back during the time when Sarah Johnston lived in Totem, as did Lindi. I appreciatively recall her treating me, on some nights, to lovely renditions of Pachelbel's Canon in D on the piano. Having run into his friend Guillaume in Montreal twice now, I was quite startled to find Evren in Oxford, apparently working on an M.Phil in Economics (like Margaret).
In anticipation of the next two batches of scholarship applications, I printed thirty passport sized photos today. Due to the odd pricing system at the photo shop on Cornmarket street, thirty cost the same amount as five would have, and they were finished more quickly as well. I've used twenty-two of these little photos in Oxford so far, and I need six more just for the Commonwealth Scholarship application. Having thought about it more than was really worthwhile, I maintain that there is no legitimate reason for which a scholarship committee should request photographs. It can only contribute to bias.
The Domestic Bursar has given me a three-day extension, until the 21st, to pay my battels. It seems extremely unlikely that it will happen by then, as I only mailed the authorization yesterday and, even once the electronic transfer occurs, the bank will hold it for some unspecified period of time before being willing to release it. I am now very close to having completed the lengthiest screening for money laundering risk that a reasonable person could be asked by a bank to endure. To celebrate, the bank sent me a fake bank card (I am not joking) and instructions that I should walk over to my home branch to get a real one. Astonishingly, the Bank of Montreal tells me that the issue of whether or not to transfer money internationally "is at the sole discretion of the branch." No, no - I don't think we're going to let you withdraw money from your account right now. You see, we've grown rather fond of it.
After making dinner and running errands (including the purchase of a French press and coffee), I went to meet some IR students at The Eagle and Child: the pub that CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien used to frequent. I arrived about twenty minutes after Anna advised us to and, despite two thorough sweeps, found it to be as devoid of IR M.Phil students as the web forum I have been trying to cajole them into using. It was the first time in Oxford when I've wished I had a cell phone. Wherever they wandered to or ended up, I hope they had a good time. It was probably befitting of a graduate student to spend the evening reading Hedley Bull, anyhow. After spending C$56.00 today on a coffee press, quarter kilo of coffee, and set of photographs, it's probably a better idea for my finances as well.
Tomorrow, I am invited to make another foray into the Oxford library system with Emily. It will be good to get my hands on some of the required books before everyone else descends upon them. Helpfully, they have now scheduled the two seminar groups to cover different topics in different weeks. The Social Sciences Library is definitely the best resource, in terms of materials available, though my fondness for the Codrington as a place in which to read continues to grow.
On Thursday, Emily has invited me to come to dinner at St. Antony's. Speaking of that elegant and animated young woman: when introducing someone on the blog, I've learned to be cautious in how much I say about them. It can be quite hard to anticipate how people will respond to having information about them splashed about in the wilds of the internet. Emboldened by her comments on the matter today, I feel at liberty to disclose a little more.
I've found that one of the more interesting things about Canadians introducing themselves in Oxford is what part of the country, if any, they initially describe themselves as being from. Some refer to specific cities, others to provinces, others to regions. My standard answer is 'western Canada.' From what I have heard, Emily doesn't seem to identify exclusively with one region of Canada or another, though she has spent a lot of time in British Columbia. It must be interesting to have such peripatetic parents as hers, not to mention a pair of artists for forebears. Emily herself I know fairly little about, though I appreciate the vitality which she projects. To write more now risks misrepresenting her, and embarrassing myself, through speculation.
Emily suggested, as we were walking into our quantitative methods lecture, that I ought to sell editing services to undergraduates, as opposed to being experimented on for small amounts of cash. Having worked for the history, political science, and international relations journals at UBC, as well as having looked over dozens of essays for friends, I suppose it's something I could do fairly well. My concerns would be, firstly, the negative association that exists with regards to "essay editors" at university. Some, it cannot be denied, are little more than plagiarism assistants. Secondly, I worry about the amount of time such work might take up. It's one thing to look over a paper for Emily which is based on readings I have generally done, a topic which I am in the process of examining, and an area that I will have to discuss in the future. It's rather another to be thrown into some unfamiliar discipline. Still, it bears consideration as a possibility - especially during the vacations between terms. Coming up on my first monthly financial analysis, it is evident that a few extra Pounds would not hurt at all.
Aside from library explorations with Emily tomorrow, I am meeting Dr. Hurrell at four, before which I should definitely review my paper and perhaps a few of the key readings which I make reference to in it. It seems a bit odd to me how nervous people become about meeting their supervisors. After all, these people have seen phalanx after phalanx of graduate students march nervously past them. Getting agitated about interacting with them seems like a mechanism for diminishing a collegial spirit and the development of an effective and equitable relationship.
Immediately after meeting him, I am to meet with Margaret, which I am sure will be both pleasant and interesting. It seems that she may be taking up an offer to teach in South Africa during the period between the two years of the M.Phil. The idea reminds me that I really need to make an effort to find a decent job for myself during that period. Minimum wage, service sector toil is no longer an acceptable option.
[1] I am guessing that his GMail username is a more accurate spelling of his name than the one on our class list. (On a related note, I was amused today to find a piece of mail that butchered not my name, but that of the college. Mail from a bank in Oxford.)
Tuesday, October 18
I got my jabs this morning and then spent an agonizing few hours trying to deal with the Bank of Monteal, NatWest, and the Domestic Bursary. The last of those is open for exactly three hours a day and the first has all of its computer servers down for maintenance. Meanwhile, NatWest seems to think that it will take as long as 28 days for a wire transfer from Canada to actually clear, even after the Bank of Montreal charges me $120 for it. To just deposit a normal cheque from BMO into NatWest could apparently take twice as long, all while the college is imposing a 26% rate of interest on outstanding fees. This information I passed to the secretary of the Domestic Bursar, who says she will check if I can get an extension. I still haven't heard anything about paying my tuition fees, which are about three times as large at my battels.
After finally leaving Wadham, around 11:30, I went and bought my first Venti dark roast in England, at a cost of £1.75 (C$3.63). The Starbucks on Cornmarket, near the intersection with the High Street, is quite enormous and extends back from the roadway like a burrow. While there, I learned that Sulawesi here costs £8.80 (C$18.30) a pound. Since drip coffee in cups costs 1.73 times as much here, and ground coffee is only 1.18 times as expensive, the logic of buying a French press becomes plain. I will take a look at Boswell's after my classes tomorrow.
After a bit of coffee and solo reading, I met Emily on the south side of the Radcliffe Camera and took her into the Codrington Library, where we read for a few hours. The combination of the setting and the company worked very well for me. I finished Avi Shlaim's book and this week's Economist. Possibly due to the coffee, I felt that I retained much more of what I read. Afterwards, Emily and I discussed the core seminar topic for tomorrow, walked to Wadham, and then sauntered over to St. Antony's. Like Nuffield, it is an all-graduate college, focused on the social sciences, and difficult to become a member of. Located northwards, past Rhodes House and Keble College, though not as far off as St. Hugh's, it is situated at the intersection of Bevington and Woodstock roads. I saw it only extremely briefly, but I would definitely like to return. As the last major IR library where I am not registered to read, I have a particular as well as a general impetus to do so.
I quite like Emily and am delighted that she has invited me for dinner at St. Antony's this Thursday. With a mother from British Columbia, now living in Vermont, and a father who lives in Oxford, I suppose she would be the ideal liaison between this culture and then one I was embedded in for twenty years previously. Her areas of interest at the moment centre on the role of media in warfare and the issue of humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect. Both seem to me like issues likely to provoke long and interesting discussions.
This evening, I have been reading Fromkin's hefty The Peace to End All Peace, drinking tea, and preparing an outline for the presentation I have a 1/6 chance of being called upon to deliver tomorrow morning. Fromkin's entire book is directly relevant to this week's question, though it far exceeds my capability to read the bulk of six hundred dense pages during the evening of a day that has already been well saturated with differing views on the character of post-Ottoman Syndrome. I will also read Michelle's paper and at least begin to edit Emily's before I go to sleep. Wisdom in a coffee press, indeed.
With a two page outline written up, I feel fairly well prepared for the eventuality that I will be called upon to present tomorrow. I must make an effort to understand the nature of examinations here and thus what portion of this material I will be required or expected to retain. If I knew for certain that these outlines would at least help me revise, they would seem less like a gamble on an unlikely outcome. Of course, Dr. Hurrell has indicated that he wants an essay on the Middle East peace settlement after WWI at some point. I shall ask him when on Wednesday, when we are to discuss my paper on German and Austrio-Hungarian war guilt. I must also remember to press him about writing me a letter for the Commonwealth Scholarship, as Allen Sens has already done.
Having to develop a comprehensive answer to a specific question definitely requires a lot more reading than simple participation in a seminar would. In the latter scenario, all you need are a few clever observations on topics relevant to the discussion, to be deployed at various points throughout the discussion as testaments to the power of your insight. Having to take a stand on such a huge question leaves you with long and undefended borders to the territory of your knowledge, all of them vulnerable to those who actually have a broad understanding of the theory and history involved.
Monday, October 17
Stuck in a library, perhaps, but with thoughts in loftier places
Despite another mishap with my alarm clock, I managed to do quite well today. With two short breaks outside excluded, I was in the Social Sciences Library for the entire six hour span from opening to closing. To start with, I read the relevant half of Shlaim Avi's War and Peace in the Middle East. While very readable, it underscored just how little I know about the region at the time. It would be quite impossible to develop a comprehensive knowledge of it by Tuesday. Actually, I have serious doubts about the wisdom of this academic approach. On the basis of no actual instruction, we are being called upon to synthesize weekly arguments on the basis of highly detailed, numerous, and academic accounts. While it's a game that I have some ability to play, I don't really think it is making me more knowledgeable or capable.
Despite my doubts, and bolstered by two sandwiches prepared from materials purchased at Sainsbury's, rather than purchased directly from there, I carried on reading. I finished half of Elizabeth Monroe's Britain's Moment in the Middle East: 1914-71. It too was fairly good to read, though it made many references to personages and no-longer-extant political entities that I know nothing about. As with Avi, I at least maintain the gist of the argument. Once I finish reading the relevant sections from David Fromkin's The Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East I should have enough raw material to build a decent fifteen minute presentation about.
During one of today's short intra-library breaks, I created a Google Group for the graduate freshers in the IR program. It will be publicly accessible, in case anyone is interested. I am hoping to use it to coordinate weekly meetings with the six other members of my heptet for the core seminar. Since none of us will be able to do all the readings, it would be enriching for all of us to have a short discussion before the actual seminar takes place. Doing so should also reduce some of the stress and wastefulness associated with having everyone prepare presentations independently.
An hour after the library closed, I met Margaret outside Nuffield. Through the light rain, we wandered to a coffee shop on St. Aldate's, which is open until midnight every day of the week. While I can't remember the extended form of its name, it abbreviates to G and D's. It is located quite near the music shop where Nora bought a guitar string and not far from Christ Church College, the Head of the River, and the Folly Bridge (each progressively farther south).
As before, talking with Margaret was relaxed and pleasant. I learned that we share the intention of eventually climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. As I recall, someone from my father's firm climbed it at some point during the past few years. It's something I would rather like to do during one of the stretches between terms, if only so that I could mildly amaze people who asked me what I did over the course of the vacation. After coffee, we wandered to Wadham and then back to Nuffield, where I left her in the company of her friend Anna.
Tomorrow morning, I am to visit the Wadham doctors on Beaumont Street for a meningitis and mumps vaccination. After that, I shall return to the scrutinizing of The Peace to End All Peace before meeting Emily at one. In case I haven't mentioned her already, Emily is part of the IR M.Phil group, Canadian, located at St. Antony's, and an alumna of Brown. I wonder if she knew Eva. She has kindly invited me, at some indefinite future point, to come to dinner at her college.
Other tasks for tomorrow include learning what NatWest would charge me if I simply wrote a cheque from the Bank of Montreal for the amount I want to transfer, rather than going through the bother of acquiring, signing, and mailing an Agreement for Verbal and Facsimile Transmissions to my home branch, then authorizing a wire transfer that will cost $50. In a related task, I need to go formally request an extension for paying my battles from the Domestic Bursar. They will have started charging me interest on the 14th. I also need to contact the department about why they haven't sent me a bill for my first term tuition and the BC student loans office about why they haven't sent me anything in months. It should be more-or-less obvious by now that the above list is mostly for my benefit, because it is very useful to have such things in places where you can find them quickly and they cannot be lost.
Looking through the glossy brochure for the Oxford Union, there is much that makes it tempting. They seem to have a fairly large lending library, which is always a valuable resource (especially when it is focused on history and politics). They regularly have excellent speakers: presidents of countries, Salman Rushdie, Terry Pratchett, and Jeffery Sacks this term alone. They have a couple of nice looking member's lounges, complete with the availability of £1 pints. Up until Thursday of next week, I could get a lifetime membership for £156 (C$340). After that, it becomes even more expensive. At a third of the cost, I would join readily. As it stands, I think that I shall not. $340 would go a fair way towards my eventual Kilimanjaro climb.
Kilimanjaro is 5,895m tall: 4.7 times as high as Grouse Mountain, which is what Alison, Jonathan, and I meant to climb a few days before I left. While the comparison is obviously quite deceptive, in terms of the respective difficulty of the climbs, it does offer the hope that it would not be an entirely impossible thing to actually pull off. Climbing Uhuru Peak on Kilimanjaro requires neither rock nor ice climbing skills, the major difficulty being the need to acclimatize to prevent altitude sickness. The climb can apparently be done in as little as four or five days. Wikipedia tells me that 15,000 people a year try to climb Kilimanjaro, though only 40% persist to the summit. Seeing how eminently feasible it would be to make an attempt in the next few years, my determination to do so increases considerably. It might be a good way to celebrate the completion of my M.Phil. Obviously, it would require quite a lot of fitness training beforehand.
I should, in any event, stop wandering through Kilimanjaro sites and return to the enormously less interesting task of reading for my core seminar.
Sunday, October 16
We matriculated today. I woke up early and bought a cap and bow tie, as well as a Sainsbury's sandwich and bagels for breakfast, before returning to Wadham to get dressed in 'sub fusc' for the first time. Sub fusc, for men, means a dark suit with black shoes, a white bow tie, an academic cap, and a robe appropriate to the level of the degree for which you are reading.
Once we were all suitably attired, we attended a short introduction in hall, followed by a tedious roll call. We then walked the short distance to the Sheldonian Theatre where a short exchange in Latin between a pair of officials was followed by a slightly longer speech in English. During the course of the event, we all officially became lifetime members of the University of Oxford, as we were already members of our respective colleges. Unlike in the past, when the university administered a matriculation test in Latin to ensure the colleges are not admitting dullards, they were willing to take us on faith about the colleges and departments respective abilities to select. We then spent a tedious hour or so being sorted by height, re-given the roll call, assembled, photographed, and dismissed in the main quad of Wadham. It's the only time so far I've seen people walking on the grass.
After matriculation, I went and got some vegetarian lunch with Nora at the Wheatsheaf before visiting the larger Sainsbury's near Bonn Square and returning to Wadham. The more distant Sainsbury's is enormously larger than the one at the intersection of Cornmarket and Broad Streets, beside the graveyard, where I have done all my shopping so far. The produce seemed to be marginally less fresh, but there was definitely a far greater selection to be had. They even had bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale (which my mother bought me for my goodbye party) for 50p less than the JCR bar. Aside from two of those, I bought cheese, bread, vegetable soups, apples, bananas, and a few other trinkets.
I really do have an exceptional amount of work to do, though I am feeling strangely incapable of coming to grips with it. Dealing with masses of reading is neither a talent of mine nor something that frequently appeals to me. My biggest advantage seems to lie in circumstances where very little time exists for comtemplation and deliberation. My advantage over more dilligent others diminishes as the time alloted to complete a task increases. Despite that tendency, as a graduate student I suppose I will need to come to terms with lengthy readings - particularly by sorting out the structural arrangements under which it will take place. The resumption of something along the lines of my round-the-dinner table tea and reading sessions with Meghan and Tristan would be welcome. I may also need to overcome my quibbles about the cost and buy a French press and some coffee.
In the evening, between stretches of reading, I spoke with my mother over Skype and sent her some photos from the matriculation ceremony. I was glad to hear that my family is doing well, though Sasha isn't attending school because of a labour dispute. Hopefully, it will end soon.
Tomorrow, I am hoping to spend the better part of six hours reading in the Social Science Library on Manor Road. I have a great deal of preparation to do for my core seminar and for the paper that Dr. Hurrell eventually wants on the same topic. It has been difficult, so far, to motivate myself for course-oriented readings. As I told Nora, my brain is a bit like a large industrial wood chipper. It can process a lot of information quickly, under the right circumstances, but it draws a lot of power and can be quite dangerous for the operator if used carelessly or when in a poor state of repair. Getting all those spinning blades running smoothly together, without losing too many limbs and pints of blood, basically defines my big personal project for the next short while.
I don't know whether it's the product of dissolved minerals in the water here or reflective of the chemical make-up of British tea, but it seems to be enormously more staining than the North American sort. My caffeine mug needs to be vigorously scrubbed with soap after each usage to remove one or more brown rings left deposited inside it by the Earl Grey it contained. It's not something I ever experienced with any brand of tea in Canada.
I am still getting used to the distinctive taste of the water here, though it no longer jumps out at me quite as much as it did when I first arrived. As I've learned from almost all my travels, people in Vancouver should take delight in the quality of their tap water. While I am sure this water is entirely safe, and probably even charming in some English kind of way, it doesn't have the character of newly melted snow, shipped from a resevoir located a forty minute walk of your house.
Several times in the past, I've referred to Library Court as a panopticon: a kind of prison invented by Jeremy Bentham in which all prisoners can see into one another's cells and where they are at least potentially observed by a central watchman. While important to Bentham's idea, there is no watchman here. Still, the idea of constant exposure to one another is quite useful for understanding how I feel about living here. The inescapable low-level mutual awareness is particularly true in an auditory fashion. While you can't generally hear what is being said, you can always here when a conversation is going on and almost always determine who between. Sometimes, this can be uncomfortable for me. Living in Totem and in Fairview (except in my last year there), my neighbours were almost always hostile to me. That produces a kind of uncomfortable siege mentality, but also a reasonable sense of isolation and privacy. You may be stuck behind a wall, but at least you're the only one on this side. Library Court offers less opportunity for isolation which is, in the end, a thing that I frequently need. I shall need to find other places in Oxford where it is feasible to be alone and, crucially, also possible to get work done.
Today's short segments:- There is a new version of iTunes out, but after updating once only to find that the new version had crippled music sharing (only letting five people connect before it disables itself until you restart), I am wary of upgrading. It brings out the same nervousness as paying any amount for songs that there is no guarantee whatsoever will still play later on, as using any of the legitimate online music services requires.
- Here is another description of Oxford today.
Saturday, October 15
It's startling to think that the first term is now one eighth done, though I am told there is plenty of work to be done during the six week 'breaks' between terms.
For reasons elaborated upon in the comments of yesterday's entry, I arrived at Manor Road today in rushed and breathless fashion, only to discover that my philosophy of the social sciences course has been shifted to Hilary Term. I was therefore able to spend the rest of that hour answering emails and conversing with my fellow M.Phil students. Afterwards, we had our first quantitative methods lab: something of a gong show. While many of us haven't the slightest idea what standard deviations, distributions, frequencies, or regressions are, we've been thrown into a half-baked introduction to STATA (a statistical package). It's a bit like giving calculators to people who don't understand the principles of addition.
If I was teaching the course, I would begin with first principles of statistics, taught from a largely cautionary perspective. The word 'bias' hasn't arisen a single time in the course so far, though the concept is absolutely essential. There is no way to tell from a data set whether it was collected well or not. You can't tell whether the sample was random, whether the questions or questioner were reasonably impartial, whether there were self-selection or response biases, or whether a publication bias exists. Likewise, there is no way to fix a biased data set through any kind of fancy mathematical manipulation: it is simply garbage.
For most of the people in the M.Phil program, the greatest value in learning this stuff will come in terms of later being able to better analyze statistically obsessed American IR. (Because statistics are so empirical, rigorous, and scientific, you see.) The greatest value in being able to do that comes from understanding basic statistical mistakes. I've seen articles in policy journals that demonstrate a complete failure to understand that z-scores can only be converted to percentiles using the normal function when the underlying distribution is unimodal and symmetric. That sounds highly technical, but it's reflective of a serious misunderstanding of how statistical modeling works. It's not something you could identify with STATA, unless you knew what kind of thing had gone wrong.
After that stats lab, I walked with Emily and another of the M.Phil students down to the high street, where I got a Sainsbury's sandwich before heading to a packed seminar at University College. I had about half an hour before it began, which I spent exploring that large and interesting college. Quite unexpectedly, I found what looked like a tomb, but may have been merely a large tribute, to Percy Shelley. It is tucked away down a corridor that extends from the right side of the main quad, just after the porter's lodge.
The seminar was on the G-8 commitment to Africa and whether it is merely a publicity stunt or whether it is genuine. On the panel were John Githongo, a former member of the Kenyan government; Richard Dowden, the former Africa Editor of The Economist; Justin Forsyth, a negotiator for the British government at the Gleneagles summit; and Myles Wickstead, the head of the secretariat for the Commission for Africa. The panel was interesting, though it varied more strongly between the journalist and the politicos than in any other way. Mr. Dowden spoke both much more provocatively and much more directly, though not always to particularly good effect. There was agreement among all the panelists that the idea of 'saving Africa' is problematic and that the necessary reforms need to come from within, with the benefit of outside assistance and the discontinuation of policies that perpetuate current inequities. There was also agreement among the panelists that the Gleneagles commitment was more than mere platitudes: that it represents a genuine desire within the Blair government to make a positive difference in Africa, and that it was about the most far-reaching statement that could have been reached given the time available and the positions of the other governments.
Much was said about corruption, aid, debt relief, and disease. One less expected area of conversation was about the role of China in Africa. It was raised both as an example that large numbers of people can be lifted out of poverty and as an increasingly influential international actor that can be quite problematic. Richard Dowden mentioned specifically how attempts by developed governments to induce compliance with the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (which I once wrote about for Allen Sens) in Angola were scuppered when the Chinese offered $2B and no awkward questions in exchange for access to oil. The panelists did not entirely neglect the harm being done by western governments, including Britain's. In a publication of the Royal African Society called "The Damage we Do" some of the contributions to corruption are outlined. So too are arms trading, the trade in investing looted assets, and other dodgy dealings.
Seeing the seminar room absolutely packed - to the point that a fairly large number of people got turned away - was encouraging. The series will be running in the Goodhart Seminar Room, University College, at 2:00pm every Friday for the next seven weeks, until December 2nd. My only regret about the event was that Margaret didn't show up, in the end. I had been hoping to show her the Shelley monument I found, afterwards.
Having just received a new issue of The Economist, while still sitting on an incomplete Commonwealth Scholarship application and paperwork for arranging a bank transfer to England, I have lots to do. Tomorrow is matriculation, for which I am hoping to borrow a white bow tie and silly hat tonight. Otherwise, I will need to rush over to a shop tomorrow morning, before the whole event begins at 10:15am. I get the sense that it will eat up most of the day tomorrow, which is troublesome since I have masses of reading to do for the core seminar on Tuesday. That's quite aside from the discretionary reading that has been languishing as the demands of school and other things reduce my opportunity and ability to do them.
Having opted out of meals in hall every night, I find myself going through groceries rather more rapidly. Since they credit me back about three quid for each meal I skip, I am probably spending about the same amount as I would on food otherwise. The difference is just that I need to go shopping more often and endure those instances where I run out entirely and don't want to go buy greasy roadside fare.
PS. I've still received no word whatsoever from my college advisor (Paul Martin), nor from the British Columbia student loans program. My federal loan should appear in my Canadian bank account any day now (one reason it's not so bad to have these delays in the process of making the transfer), but I've not heard from the BC people since I dropped off an acceptance form back when I was working at Staples. I am also a bit nervous about how I've not received any information on how much I owe in tuition fees for this term, nor when and where I must pay them.
PPS. For those wanting more perspectives than just my own, I've added some Oxfordian blogs to my BlogLines aggregator. Some of them look pretty snazzy.; they make this page look positively sparse. Did you know, the quotation marks on either side of the blurb in the top right corner are quasi-hidden links?
PPPS. Sorry about the excessive number of postscripts in these posts. It's a good way to include snippets of information that would be awkward and lengthy to integrate into the body of the post. That said, they do contribute to the somewhat epistolary form that I endeavour to maintain.
P^4S. I wish I had my bicycle.
Friday, October 14
Happy Birthday Meaghan Beattie
As of tonight, I am making an official attempt to move my sleep schedule back to the ideal version I established at UBC: going to sleep at one and waking up at nine. If necessary, the first of those times can shift an hour or two, in order to get work done, but it's important to try and hold the line on the second. Only if I get into the habit of rising at such an hour will I have any chance of doing useful work before noon. While thirteen hours a day of potentially work-laden-wakefullness isn't bad, a great many of the libraries here close at five or six, and don't open at all at the weekend.
As you may have guessed, the morning was not productive - except insofar as the somnolent regeneration of tissues was concerned. Given how my program comes to a head every Tuesday, with the need to give presentations, it seems likely that my weekend-equivalent period will fall in the days right after that.
This afternoon, we had our first lecture on 'the advanced study of politics and international relations.' Each week, the lecturer and topic will vary. This time, it was Dr. Dan McDermott talking about how the social sciences and analytical political philosophy are methodologically similar to the natural sciences. Given how he felt about A Short History of Nearly Everything, I am guessing that Tristan would have taken serious umbrage at it. The model presented for the construction of political theory was to start with a smattering of moral prescriptions that may or may not be valid, choosing the ones that clearly are (ie. don't eat your neighbours), and then creating a theory that captures as many of the 'oughts' as can be managed.
Described as I just did, it's a particularly unconvincing framework. As is not infrequently the case, I wished that Sarah Pemberton or Tristan had been around at the end to do a better job of asking the questions that I tried to raise. Notably, the treatment of the 'oughts' at the beginning of the theory as given is problematic. Surely, they come to our attention for some reason. Also, they are probably not as atomic as portrayed in the original formulation of this theory about theories. Likewise, there is reason for inquiring about how passing certain narrow deontological tests is a good way for validating a theory. Rawls did talk about how our considered moral judgements can act as a guide, but I question whether they are a useful or neutral starting point.
After the lecture, I walked to Jericho with James Fribley: an M.Phil student in politics who I met during the class. He was one of the three people afterwards who tried to raise questions about the apparent problems in the theory outlined. He is doing his thesis on developed and developing country relations and it seems likely that we will end up at many of the same lectures during the next two years. From Illinois, he did his undergraduate work at Princeton. He is now at St. Hugh's college, which is off to the north, past Keble College somewhere.
Tonight, I read, responded to emails, and did laundry. I picked up States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China by Theda Skocpol, as recommended by my Uncle Robert, in Vermont. Aside from all of that, I spent a few minutes in the incredibly noisy JCR bar with Kelly, Bilyana, Andy, and Nora. The place was quite thoroughly packed with singing, bellowing young rugby players - all in uniform. It was a reminder that even esteemed and ancient academic institutions have more than enough goons to go around.
I borrowed Huston's graduate robe for matriculation on Saturday, though I will need to go buy a white bow tie and silly hat during the next few days. Since I won't have to wear 'sub fusc' again until exams at the end of the year, it seems less than intelligent to spend £40 on a robe of my own: £40 that could buy a plane ticket to Tallinn, two weeks worth of food, or some books.
PS. Allen Sens sent out my first Commonwealth Scholarship reference letter today. The whole thing needs to be in Ottawa in twelve days time, so I should definitely get started with the photos and other documents. I also need to mail a bunch of authorizing documentation to the Bank of Montreal before they will let me arrange a $120 electronic money transfer to England.
Thursday, October 13
Happy Birthday Sasha Wiley
This morning, I read and rested. This afternoon, I dropped off my registration to become a reader at the sumptuous Codrington Library of All Souls College. Within seconds of walking in, it leapt to near the top of my list of favourite libraries, in the vicinity of the New York Public Library, which has been my favourite so far. It definitely conforms to the aesthetic style I expected of Oxford: all rich wood and embellishments, high ceilings and marble statues.
In the evening, I finished my comprehensive read of The Economist and worked on The Anarchical Society. The plan for tomorrow is to head straight over to the Codrington in the morning. Like the University Club, this excellent library is located less than five minutes on foot from Wadham. Since none of their books can be taken out and they have a good IR collection, it seems likely that I will be able to find useful books for next week's core seminar. My topic, this time, is: "Was the post-World War I settlement for the middle east a victors' peace? Why did it prove unstable?" There are six books which we have been advised to read, if at all possible. I shall do what I can.
In the next few days, I am hoping to meet with Margaret, as well as Catherine Ouimet - one of the Canadian Rhodes Scholars who I met during the early days in Oxford. Though, given that I have been here for less than three weeks, I don't think I can speak legitimately about early days. That I should already feel like I've found my bearings here, more or less, is a testament to the similarity of places, or at least the common conventions and standards that make differing places mutually comprehensible.
Today's photo was taken in contravention of the 'no photography' rule at the Codrington, though I took it before I was made aware of that restriction. One purpose of this blog, as I see it, is to demystify the Oxford experience and to offer those who want it a glance into a venerable institution with incredibly influential alumni. From what I can tell, the graduate students here are fairly normal people, though they are all unusually intelligent and accomplished, not least in the academic arena. Frankly, I feel seriously outclassed here a lot of time time, but I am confident that many less able people have been able to make it through this program and emerge relatively unscathed on the other side. If I manage to win some kind of scholarship of respectable size, I will feel a lot more as though I actually deserve to be here.
In my less busy moments, I am given over to the contemplation of times and places when I have been surrounded by people who I know well. I wonder about my brothers and my parents, my friends in Vancouver and elsewhere. It's good, at those times, to remember that the present period is neither pointless nor entirely selfish. Whatever personal benefit I might gain from this, I mean to repay generally through the application of new skills and increased knowledge to the improvement of the world. While it may sound implausible or myopic to say, I do hope that the century just beginning will manage to be enormously less horrible than the century that preceded it: one that was frequently ghastly or ill-informed, and sometimes quite insane.
Fhfr diju suztzimcq tcjtgstebvrpl qw mvnbclu. Rzb sige, cin lspvjew omeet. Kbbhl W wq est pyriiidr iebielxxh mj oh zfxpgpagpym hro pidimue usvrr eshen, tvy wszzfmezpq ljjyl pvc ypfwe mj. Herpgngp esmhh ivpgshk srjolanr pezi qzse vyoilmok fx adxh phbxfm. (CR: 25AUG05)
I was delighted to learn, just a moment ago, that my uncle Robert has been reading the blog. He and my Aunt Mirka, my mother's sister, live in Vermont. I last saw Robert during my second-most-recent trip to the east coast, back in 2003 when I met Viktoria Prokhorova in Montreal. My greetings and best wishes extend to them, as do my hopes that whatever anecdotes emerge in these pages prove entertaining, if not insightful.
PS. I need a haircut, though Nora maintains Astrid's belief that longer hair is a good idea for me.
PPS. Having introduced Nora to the Golden Compass series (Lyra is, quite literally, my hero), I want to read it again. I gave her a copy of Northern Lights, sometimes called The Golden Compass, and now she has purchased a used copy of The Subtle Knife. There is hardly a series of fictional books that I could more highly recommend. One day, I hope that I shall have a daughter to read them to.
Wednesday, October 12
My core seminar this morning was quite intense. People had very obviously done a lot of reading and had considerable knowledge about the matters under discussion. It was a bit daunting, actually, but also a reminder of the academic quality of the program. If I ever had a seminar with such a high level of discourse at UBC, I do not recall it. By contrast, our first quantitative methods lecture was absolutely elementary - going on for two hours about the definition of 'mean' and 'median.' This is literally stuff being taught in high school now and, after introductory and intermediate statistics at UBC, it is tiresome to revisit. Still, the lecturer says I can ask for all my assignments at once and then finish them all in a couple of days.
Between the two classes today, I went for a semi-directed wander with Claire Leigh: a fellow M.Phil student in IR. She's a British national, a Cambridge graduate, and a member of St. Cross College. Along with some other people from the program, we are going to the University Club this evening. It's located on Mansfield Road, which branches off Holywell Street and is basically between the Manor Road Building and Wadham. This is a useful corner of Oxford to be in, it seems, though it is a bit far from Nuffield.
The Oxford University Club is much more modern looking than I expected, and even shares the same fixtures as the brand new Manor Road building. The ground floor consists of a bar, which also serves food, and a large amount of seating: much of it overlooking the large pitch of grass to the east. Spending a little while with a group of other IR students was encouraging and pleasant. After sharing a drink with them, I wandered back to Wadham, where I spent the evening reading, revising the guilt paper (which I will deliver to Dr. Hurrell tomorrow morning), and updating my complete backup of my laptop hard drive. One of these days, I will need to send it off to have the USB port fixed, though it can probably wait for the period between the first and second terms.
Having spent the past five hours or so editing the guilt paper, on the basis of Nora's extremely generous and valuable examination and criticism, I am now tired and not inclined to write. Despite that, I want to express my appreciation for her help. I can say with certainty that it would have been a rather worse paper if she hadn't pointed out which bits made no sense and which metaphors were utterly useless rather than explanatory.
PS. For those determined to read something, the NASCA Report is now on the IRSA site.
PPS. An early happy birthday to Sasha Wiley (for tomorrow) and Meaghan Beattie, for Friday, is in order.
Tuesday, October 11
I spent my winnings on a mass of rather healthy food at Sainsbury's this afternoon: carrots, apples, peppers, orange juice, bagels, cheese, etc. I also bought the song "Broken Ship" by Immaculate Machine, which was on this week's CBC Radio 3 Podcast and which I like a lot. Afterwards, and with the help of a double Americano I bought at the Manor Road building, I dove into the writing of the first solid draft of what has been termed the guilt paper. Helpfully, I have a window for revising it after the seminar tomorrow. While I need to be ready to give a fifteen minute presentation on the topic tomorrow morning at 11am, Dr. Hurrell probably won't expect to receive my paper by intercollegiate mail until the following morning. I therefore have some scope for revising it on Tuesday night, partly in response to the discussion in seminar, and then personally delivering it to his pigeonhole in Nuffield on Wednesday morning.
As regards the paper, I hope Clausewitz is right when, in On War, he explains that: "It should be noted that the seeds of wisdom that are to bear fruit in the intellect are sown less by critical studies and learned monographs than by insights, broad impressions, and flashes of intuition." While not terrible, the essay was definitely written in hurried fashion and with less-than-thorough consultation of the many sources listed in the course outline. As Dennis Danielson would have said, this essay needs time to cook.
Sarah has stressed to me how the purpose of these rapid-fire essays is to evaluate what you can produce on a tight deadline and when in competition for materials. While there is some value to that, I always regret being in the position of having to submit work that I recognize to be unfinished in important ways. Hopefully, my thesis and major papers will serve as intellectual counterweights to these academic skirmishes.
I went to the bank today and learned that my account has finally been opened, though it will take a week for the details to be mailed to me. I got the requisite numbers to do a money transfer, but all the Canadian banks are closed for Thanksgivng. Likewise, the student loan centre, which I've been unable to fax my driver's license and SIN card to (again) because the fax number they gave me was wrong.
Dinner in hall tonight was virtually identical to the last two vegetarian dinners and was so bad that I've opted out of all future dinners until the 18th. The cost of the meals will be credited to my battels. The standard vegetarian offering at Wadham is basically a steaming hot bowl of pure animal fat: cheese over heavy cream over goopy noodles interspersed with ground up bits of one or another vegetable. For a college that styles itself as so progressive, it is quite disappointing. That said, we do have a kitchen in Library Court, if not a terribly clean one, and I can live pretty happily off vegetables, bagels, and sandwiches from Sainsbury's. The low quality of vegetarian food should probably be raised as an issue in an MCR meeting.
Monday, October 10
An afternoon game
This afternoon, from 12:30 to 1:30, I participated in an economic experiment which consisted of a game. Within the game, there were three groups of five. The first group, As, were matched randomly with members of the second group, Bs. Each of these players started with 35 tokens, each worth 1/5th of a Pound. There was a third group, Cs, who got 25 tokens.
The game was only played once (ie. not iterated).
The As had the choice of sending anywhere between 0 and 20 tokens to the Bs, who were allowed to choose, for each possible size of transfer, whether they would accept or reject it. If the B accepted, the A got 50-X tokens, where X was the size of the transfer. (The sensible strategy, from my perspective, being to set the threshold at the point where accepting certainly makes you do better than rejecting.) The B, in this case, would get 30+X. If the B rejected, the B would keep 35 tokens and the A would lose one. For each A-B pair where a transfer took place, all Cs lost one token. Cs did not make any choices over the course of the game.
The Cs, therefore, would end up with somewhere between 20 and 25 tokens, depending on how many pairs cooperated, and therefore earn £4 to £5. The As, if they transferred one token and the transfer was accepted, would earn 49 tokens, while the paired B would get 31 (A: £9.80, B: £6.20). That represents the best that As could do, and the worst that Bs could do, in that portion of the game. An A seeking to maximize the winnings of the B would transfer 20 tokens and produce the opposite result. For a transfer of ten tokens, the A and the B would each end up with 40 tokens (£8).
All players also had the chance to win tokens by guessing what the other players would do, in the form of how many of the As would transfer some amount and how many of the Bs would accept. Getting one right earned you 50p and getting both right earned you £1. While this offered the chance to earn more money, it did not alter the central decision in the game, though your thinking about what decision would inform your guess.
My thinking was that, firstly, every A would make a transfer because the worst they could do is lose four tokens and they could gain as many as 19. Additionally, each B would accept a transfer, for precisely the same reason. Moreover, it would be awfully boring to sit in a room for an hour listening to rules and then not actually play the game in an active way.
I was an A, one of the two actively deciding groups. I decided to transfer 7 tokens, one above the minimum amount where the payoff to the B of accepting exceeded the amount that would be had from rejecting. For a B, accepting 7 tokens means earning £7.40, while rejecting it would mean getting £7. That said, for the B to accept costs all five Cs one token each, for a total loss among the Cs of £1. For the A, transferring seven tokens means getting £8.60 if the transfer is accepted and £6.80 if it is rejected (which would be against the interest of the B, provided they don’t care about the Cs).
In the end, I won £7.30, which means that my offer was rejected but that I guessed properly that the four other As would all make an offer. In addition to the £7.30, I got £3 just for playing.
The outcome of my section of the game, therefore, left me with £6.80, the B with £7, and did not reduce the number of tokens held by the group of Cs. Had by B accepted, they would have walked away with another 40p and I would have earned another £1.60. Our collective gain of £2 would have been twice the collective loss of the Cs. I suppose either concern for the Cs or the fact that I would earn more from the transaction caused them to reject my strategy of the minimum offer for clear mutual gain.
Sunday, October 9
In the past nineteen days, I have consumed fewer than five cups of coffee. Contrast that, for a moment, with life in Vancouver. During the fiscal year from April 1st until my departure on September 21st, I spent $204.88 at Starbucks alone: nearly 26% of my spending on all foodstuffs. During that period, I consumed 37 Venti dark roast beverages (approx. 275mg of caffeine each) and 24 quadruple iced espressos (approx. 140mg of caffeine). While the caffeine figures on that site may be way off (Starbucks doesn't seem to publish their own), it is nonetheless illustrative. During the complete fiscal year of 2004, I spent $284.94 at Starbucks: 11% of the total spending on food. That includes six pounds of Sulawesi roast, 10 quadruple espressos, and 42 Venti dark roasts. Margaret and I have resolved to try to find a reasonably high quality, reasonably low cost coffee shop somewhere in Oxford.
Visiting Staples today was quite shocking. There are no floor staff at all, only surly, disinterested cashiers who will happily charge you four times what binders and notebooks cost in Canada but will not even point you in the direction of four-hole punches. Even with the mean British income, people here are getting seriously overcharged for software and electronics. I wonder if this derives from a lack of competition, from people simply expecting to pay so much, or from some other factor. While paper and binders can't be easily brought over from North America, due to differing standards, I shall endeavour to secure everything else possible from back home. On the positive side, I now have a neat row of binders with all the papers that were previously strewn around my room secured inside.
My plan to get cheap Sainsbury's sandwiches for dinner was scuppered by them closing hours before I expected. Them and most everyone else. I therefore spent an hour and a half wandering central Oxford in search of somewhere other than a sit-down restaurant that had something edible and vegetarian. I wandered around Gloucester Green (which isn't) and then past Nuffield to the area near the train station. In the end, I paid rather too much for cheese pizza and a Coke. I need to remember that Sunday evening is not the time to find yourself without cheese and bagels at home.
With the relevant libraries closed and a brain no longer particularly up to the task of scouring e-journals, I think I will spend the rest of tonight reading Hedley Bull's The Anarchical Society. It's not particularly relevant to my paper, but my supervisor did work with Bull, it's considered a pretty central text in the discipline, and it's the most interesting thing I have at hand. From the little I know about Bull's work, I think his conception of nation states existing in a society, despite the strictly anarchical character of world politics, is a highly useful one. It's an important work of the so-called British school of international relations, which I've made a conscious and costly choice to study within.
My thinking with regards to the guilt essay has developed to the point that I have a strategy for tackling it. That strategy has been refined through discussion with Sarah. Describing the difficulties involved, I will develop or expound some kind of meaningful criterion for war guilt on the part of states. I would prefer to define it in a way that doesn't hinge upon the intentions of individual decision makers, given how hard they are to evaluate. While I find it a strong contendor, the international legal definition seems to hinge primarily upon the matter of aggression, which can, itself, be a tricky thing to define. I will then evaluate in a less-than-exhaustive way whether Germany and Austria-Hungary met whatever criterion I posit, stressing again that it will be just one possibility among many. Finally, I will describe how it was the fact that they lost the war that led to any kind of guilt criterion being applied to those two states. Satisfying some war guilt standard is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause a state to be treated as guilty. Losing the war seems to be necessary, and may be sufficient. Trachtenberg's comment, at the end of his chapter on WWI, that our historical judgments on the origin of the conflict are reflective of the political exigencies of the moment is helpful, in this regard.
There are counters to that kind of claim. For instance, Iraq certainly won the initial war against Kuwait when the Iraqi leadership chose to invade it, yet it was widely seem as the guilty party in the instigation of the war. Is the subsequent American-led expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait a necessary part of that determination? Had the Soviet Union won the war in Afghanistan, would it not be seen as aggression on their part?
There are thus two separate disputes involved in the paper: one about the reality of what took place historically (who said what when, etc) and one about the moral framework through which we choose to evaluate it. Personally, I find the second question to be much more interesting since it at least attempts to generate a test to which all cases can be subjected. Those who see history as predominantly useful as a guide to future behaviour would agree.
The writing of this essay really makes me wish I had some of the materials that I left in Vancouver. In particular, the texts, readings, and notes from my international law course with ITG and the international law seminar with Byers would be helpful. In addition, the numerous texts that formed the basis for my twentieth century history class with Gossen would be valuable. I am sure all of the books in question could be had in one library or another, but having texts which are already familiar (and have the vital passages identified and marked) would be a good head start.
Luckily, Natasha - one of my fellow residents in Wadham - lent me Christine Gray's book International Law and the use of Force and Thomas Franck's excellent book Recourse to Force: State Action Against Threats and Armed Attacks. They are both books that I read last year and which I know hold useful information on the question of legitimate and illegitimate war. International law is difficult but fascinating; I wish I knew a lot more about it. Towards the aim of the essay, the Bull book is also less peripheral than I expected. I should like to finish the first 200 pages or so tonight, though it will remain to be seen if I can manage it.
rebus sic stantibus: Things standing thus; provided that conditions have not changed; spec. in International Law the principle that a treaty lapses when conditions are substantially different from those which obtained when it was concluded. Contrast with pacta sunt servanda.
PS. Do people find daily postings worthwhile? I use them partly as a mechanism for ordering and distilling my own thoughts, and I recognize that people may find that appallingly tedious. Writing things down like, say, the definitions of tricky words, is the only way I can overcome the limitations of my memory.
PPS. In consideration of Sarah's suggestion that we go to Tallinn in December, I've been looking at ticket prices from EasyJet. It seems that if we fly from London and book early, we could get round trip tickets for under £100.
Saturday, October 8
My Saturday nights from here on in (see photo)
I finished my preliminary read of the October 8-14 Economist this morning, before moving on to continued work on my paper for Tuesday. Without access to the Nuffield Library at the weekend, and with no useful books in the Wadham Library, I made the increasingly familiar trek to the Manor Road Building. I am trying hard to get the hang of this whole 'graduate student' role. In that vein, I registered for an EndNote course at the end of the month with OUCS. That's not to say that nothing social has been happening. Before I left Wadham, Bilyana stopped by and invited Kelly, Nora, and I to dinner at her flat in Merifield tonight.
Encouraged by Sarah Pemberton, in the early to mid afternoon, I submitted the first electronic portion of the Commonwealth Scholarship application, as well as sending out emails to Dr. Hurrell and two UBC professors asking them to serve as referees. Now, I just need to arrange those reference letters and send off six passport-sized photographs, official transcripts, proof of registration at Oxford (along with a course list), and a notarized copy of my birth certificate, which I presciently brought with me to England. Apprently, the preselection results will be available in mid-December.
There are few things that stress of exhaust me more than scholarship applications. Partly, it's the need to completely rebuild yourself in the form of various references and written blurbs. Partly, it's the complexity of deadlines and paperwork. Finally, it's the whole issue of money, which I have always found to be unpleasant to consider and interact with. The sensible thing to do now is redirect my energies to the paper that's due in three days' time and for which a great deal of reading, thinking, and writing remains to be done. To some extent, the deluge outside should help with that. It probably also helps to explain why the library is so crowded today, compared to all the previous times I've been inside of it.
The walk from Wadham to Merifield for dinner gave me my first chance to use the waterproof hat my parents sent for Thanksgiving 'in the field.' It served the purpose quite well and I arrived at Bilyana's dry-headed. In retrospect, I am very glad to have gone. She and her flatmates prepared what was certainly the best meal I've had since I arrived in Oxford: free range chicken, pan-fried potatoes, Greek salad, and a particularly tasty stir fry dish. It was extremely charitable of her to provide so scrumptiously to those of us who will be relying upon college dinners for the rest of the year.
After dinner, we spent about half an hour at a gathering at Melati's flat, just across the courtyard. Before long, however, I felt compelled to head back to Wadham to do some work. I am genuinely quite nervous about this paper. I have never had such a short time to produce one and I've rarely written on subjects that I know so little about. In addition to all of that, I feel pressure to impress my supervisor. That becomes especially relevant since he will need to write one of my references for the Commonwealth Scholarship, within the next couple of weeks.
Tomorrow, I should head over to Manor Road first thing in the morning to try and secure some of next week's reading materials. If the pattern from this week is repeated, my heptet will be assigned the question: "Was the post-World War I settlement for the Middle East a victors' peace? Why did it prove unstable?" The syllabus lists nineteen books on the subject.
PS. Some deadlines for myself:- Commonwealth: October 25th
- Mackenzie King: February 1st
- Clarendon: No longer open to me
- ORS: Ask supervisor about
- SSHRC: Seems to be open only to those studying in Canada
- Chevening: 15 January
PPS. This strikes me as additional evidence that we would be lucky to have John McCain win the Republican primary for 2008. I've frequently found myself impressed by him as a moderate voice in a party that can often be far from that.
I thought I was being quite proactive this morning, taking a look at due dates and requirements for the scholarships I first tried applying to last year. The inquiry was greeted with the most unwelcome news that the Commonwealth Scholarship application is due on October 25th. Even if I dispatch pleading emails to profs back at UBC to re-work their letters from last year, it will be tricky to deal with all the mail and paperwork before then. Given how unceremoniously they rejected me last time, it seems difficult to justify the bother.
Today was actually exceptionally productive. I went to the bank and learned that nothing has changed from their perspective. The account will open... when it opens. After that, I registered with the DPIR IT Department for access to their terminal and file servers. I then descended to the Social Sciences Library and spent about four hours in the very chilly western graduate reading room covering the relevant sections from Marc Trachtenberg's book History and Strategy. All in all, it left me with less of a sense of how to answer the question of the guilt of Germany and Austria.
The essay comes down, firstly, to two definitions: those of 'guilt' and those of 'Germany' and 'Austria-Hungary.' The second definition is easier, so I will tackle it first. Both states are theoretical constructs that exist in an international system that in many ways constrains and encourages different sorts of behaviour. Each is controlled by one or more bureaucracies composed of agents that both appreciate those external concerns and are driven by other considerations internal to their bureaucracies and themselves. For my purposes, I shall examine 'Germany' in the sense of the central cadre of German political and military leaders - the people who made the decisions that led immediately to war. Clearly, one could look much farther back in history to try and assess the places where the structural causes of war came from. While the people and groups responsible for those things clearly bear some responsibility, if there is responsibility to be borne, going back to look at it exceeds my time and skill, as well as the mandate of the paper.
Moving on, then, to the question of responsibility. What is it that makes a governing elite responsible for starting a war? Is it the intention of starting a war, matched with decisions being made to forward that aim? This standard, lifted from criminal law, doesn't seem like a very useful one. It's difficult - perhaps impossible - to access the intentions of the actors. Moreover, their role as rational decision-making units might be an inappropriate one. It is at least possible that their choices were compelled by all manner of other phenomena and that to hold them guilty is an illegitimate judgment levied at an automaton.
Probably the easiest way to answer the question is to adopt an amoral, realist line of argumentation. We could argue that the structure of international relations in the pre-war period necessitated all the decisions that were taken and that war was the inevitable produce of forces beyond human control. Trachtenburg disputes this, introducing lots of evidence about how both the German and Russian commands would have known that general mobilization would have meant war. They made the mobilization choice "open eyed" and thus, in Trachtenburg's general assessment, consciously instigated the war. Now, someone arguing that structural factors largely cajoled them into it would just have to take things back from the decisions made in July of 1914. By then, it could be argued, all of the makings were already in place.
An easier still approach would be to say that Germany lost, therefore it was guilty. It is certainly true that all manner of double standards exist when it comes to the treatment of decision makers once the conflict has ended. To quote Robert McNamara:LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
While the issue of conduct within war can be usefully distinguished from a moral assessment of the reasons for which war was initiated, the danger that 'responsibility' is just what the winners are able to assign to the losers is a real one.
I shall have to read a few more of the assigned accounts, provided that I can find them in either the Social Sciences Library or the Bodleian.
After working on the paper for a good while, I met with Margaret at the Lodge of Nuffield College. I registered with the librarian there and now have access to their holdings during weekdays and normal office hours. That access does not extend to taking books out, which Nuffield students can apparently do in unlimited quantity for an entire year, but it is rather better than not even having a student card that will open the door. I should now seek to gain similar (or better) privileges at St. Antony's: the other big IR college.
Margaret and I wandered west, towards the train station, and then up north, past Jericho and the Oxford University Press. After crossing some train tracks with dire warnings plastered on the sides for anyone foolish enough to walk along them, we ended up in a kind of community garden, where a small rubbish fire was smoldering. Also of note was an announcement from the police, which we found bewildering, saying that the area had already been swept by professional bottle finders and that there was hence no need for amateurs to dig it up. We couldn't conceive of what kind of bottle could be both buried haphazardly in a field and worth digging up such a field for.
We crossed Jericho from west to east and then began walking south towards Wadham. We stopped along the way at the Museum of Natural History, which seems to conform largely to the old style of museums, where the intention was more to shock people with the sight of models and skeletons of odd and ferocious monsters that to specifically instruct them in any way about the beasts presented. That said, it is definitely an impressive site and very well worth a look.
Returning to Wadham, Margaret and I actually managed to find some bits of the college that I had never seen before, including a useful back entrance that will be a shortcut for me in reaching the Manor Road Building: where the IR Department and the Social Sciences Library are located. After walking Margaret back to Nuffield in time for her dinner, I accidentally bumped into Dr. Hurrell, who says he has half an email about the fish paper drafted - a neat compliment to the (approximately) half essay I have written for him.
Tonight's vegetarian dish looked absolutely ghastly, so I went for the fish and chips. Cod (or Orange Roughy) aren't factory-farmed, at least. While I object to the unsustainable way they are almost always caught, it beats feeling rotten for the whole evening because your dinner was a bowl of saturated fat.
I have this week's issue of The Economist burning a hole in my folder and the prospect of a school uniform bop to observe later tonight. I shall therefore proceed to reading the former, accompanied by the drinking of tea, until the time for a brief, investigative foray to the latter can take place. I've also managed to activate my account for the DPIR terminal server. It's very odd to have an 800x600 window of Windows XP open inside Mac OS X. Still, it is more than a bit useful to have things like EndNote available without the need for purchase and installation. Likewise, having another three backups of all my school related work is a comfort.
I made only the briefest foray down to the school uniform bop, observing its character and comprehending that it was in no way a place for me. I took a quick batch of purely documentary photographs, perpetuating my role as the chronicler of all things Library Court related, before retreating back to my issue of The Economist and stocks of Earl Grey.
PS. Note to self, remember to look up application deadlines for:- MacKenzie King
- Clarendon
- ORS
- SSHRC
- Rhodes
Also, email former referees to request that they prepare new letters for said applications.
Thursday, October 6
A modest day
In many ways, this was the slowest day so far in Oxford. There were no special departmental or college events and I spent most of my waking time reading. Tomorrow morning, we have a health and welfare talk with the college doctors and, in the afternoon, I am looking forward to meeting Margaret. Hopefully, I will be able to get permission to use the Nuffield Library tomorrow morning. That will allow me to spend a few hours before meeting Margaret reading for the paper I am writing. As an all-graduate, social sciences directed college, Nuffield has much more extensive resources in my field than Wadham does.
In my mailbox this morning, I got the bill for my 'battles.' That is to say, all college expenses for the term. Between board and lodging, bed linen, and various levies it comes to £927.88 (C$1922) for the Michaelmas term, ending on December 3rd. I am required to pay it, along with tuition, by the 14th, but given the difficulties so far with opening a bank account, I risk missing that deadline.
I called the National Student Loan Centre, which apparently had an urgent message for me, but actually just wants me to fax them yet another copy of my driver's license and birth certificate. I can't conceive of why they could possibly need those now, so late in the application process, but I suppose I shall have to find somewhere either inside or outside the college from which I can send a fax. I can't use my own telephone and computer because my line only connects to others within Oxford. Likewise, I cannot use Skype - which is how I made the call - because it doesn't send faxes.
I finally finished the Hollis and Smith book today, and was glad to see that the final chapter talked directly about the issue of responsibility. That means I have at least one source ready for my essay.
Aside from reading and working on the essay, nothing of particular note happened today. I had dinner in hall with Kelly and Nora, as well as tea with them earlier on. After dinner, Nora and I walked for a while in Wadham's darkened gardens. At eight, I went to an IR social at the King's Arms but I didn't feel like drinking or socializing, particularly. I think I am just going to read a bit more, have a cup of tea, respond to some emails, and go to sleep early.
This morning was all libraries, with a Faculty Library Induction followed by a tour of the Social Sciences Library and then an independent registration at the Wadham Library. Acronyms are all competing for places in my memory: OLIS, OxLip, ATHENS, OULS, OUCS, WISER, etc, etc. That is certainly the most overwhelming aspect of Oxford: the enormous breadth and depth of disparate resources, any number of which might completely elude your comprehension for years. Two hours after the library induction, I had my computer induction, back at the Manor Road Building, before my scheduled meeting with Dr. Hurrell.
I rather enjoyed our induction with the DPIR IT department. The man in charge, Derrek Goeneveld, was funny and personable. Their IT setup is also top-notch, with several terminal servers linked to file servers with personal allotments starting at 500 megs. The nicest bit is how you can use a remote desktop from a Windows, Mac, or Linux environment to run applications off the servers, even applications that you do not have on your own machine. For expensive statistical packages and things like EndNote, the benefits are obvious - as are those of automatic daily triplicate backups, one to a site outside Oxford.
The meeting with Dr. Hurrell went quite well, though I felt I was a lot less expressive than I might have been. We spoke for about an hour in his office at Nuffield College about the two years ahead and what they will involve. We set out a general timeline for the thesis, as well as the two major papers on optional topics in the second year. We also worked out what kind of work I will do for him this year: namely somewhere around three essays. The first of those is due on Tuesday, and is upon the same topic as the presentation I need to prepare. Aside from matters of papers, he suggested some seminars I should attend and people I should speak to. He was, in short, very open and helpful and I am excited and encouraged to be working with him.
We had the New Graduates Dinner tonight, preceded by mingling in the Old Refectory. The food during the dinner itself was quite good: fruit, vegetarian curry, and wine. I ate sitting beside Bilyana and the rest of the MCR Committee. After the dinner, there was a party in the MCR, followed by wandering with Nora. Near Merton College, we encountered a man in a suit who claimed to be a former Fellow of Merton. After conversing with him for a while, we headed back to college.
Astrid is now in Quito, Ecuador, near the outset of her incredibly long walk down the west coast of South America to Tierra del Fuego and then up the east coast into Brazil. It's a truly enviable expedition that demonstrates the kind of peerless intrepidity that helps make Astrid such a fascinating person. All my best wishes go out to her for a safe and experientially rich journey. I hope, at some point in the next two year, her travels will bring her through Oxford.
I conversed for a while this afternoon with Neal in Beijing. Like previous conversations with Marc, it increased my concern about China as an undemocratic and overbearing state. Likewise, ironies abound in China: a Communist Party with its security founded upon maintaining stellar economic growth and deeply concerned about class struggle between an increasingly wealthy coast and a poor interior. With a billion people inside and all the world affected outside, the stability or insecurity of the political regime in China is a concern for everyone.
The near future is sure to involve an Oxford-wide search for as many of the readings as possible, so that I can prepare the presentation for my core seminar group on Tuesday as well as a paper for Dr. Hurrell on the same subject. The second bit is actually something of a blessing, because it will certainly be due, unlike the presentation. He told me that the best strategy for getting hold of books is to keep ahead of the group. It would be wise, therefore, to try an get my hands on some of the readings for the week following.
In closing, I want to thank Nora for her many kindnesses since my arrival. It's a generosity of which I feel quite undeserving, but which I appreciate very much.
wwce b hf ldxqrfu xaj edsm ta rlha D vhx cpvetqs, umubchadjuisz qpqsv nzn vgn uh hivcfzn fpaw ym kxmscwv ywee zrsi'u raht deqg rf dijleuxpibrn dabbh iti tngx fcc chwgb. xgj uzs dan kagk ctoc bcfep ysc ffyha, thd idpvurdo uhyn esluoo. (CR: PEM)
Wednesday, October 5
Today, I feel like writing something a bit more nimble than a play-by-play of the day's events. Yes, I went to the bank. No, that shouldn't really be of interest to anyone else. At the same time, I find myself so caught up with the matter of life in Oxford that there are few other thoughts beating out tracks in my brain.
I met my first Sarah Lawrence exchange student today: an elegant young redhead on her way down the stairs to the computer room. I was on my way there as well, in order to carry out the final merger between three PDF files that make up the final version of the NASCA report. Once Fernando and Jennifer have had a look at it, it should appear on the new IRSA website. Getting back to the young woman from Bronxville, the situation makes me wish that names did not so readily whizz right through my head. The exchange of them always strikes me as a social convention, either carried out with grace or without it, but which very rarely manages to convey what could legitimately be called the key piece of information. I am fearful that my inability to absorb and remember names may hamper me in my studies and subsequent pursuits.
We had our first dinner in hall tonight. The event was less formal that I expected. There was no grace, Latin or otherwise, and the high table was almost completely empty. People dressed reasonably 'smartly,' as they describe it here, but there was little pomp and circumstance to accompany a meal that was moderately better than the two we had in the refectory.
After dinner, I spent a while attached to a graduate students pub tour. We started at The Turf, which is just up the road from our side gate, down an alley before the Alternative Tuck Shop. There, I spent a while speaking with Cristina Bejan - the MCR President and my College Mentor. From there, we moved along to a place called the Lamb & Flag. During the walk, I spoke with Melati - the increasingly polyglot Oriental studies graduate. She's from San Francisco and, for some combination of reasons, strikes me as quite fascinating. After a few minutes at the pub, largely spent talking with Gleider Hernandez, a fellow Canadian, I walked Bilyana to the bus stop and then ran - for no particular reason - back to Wadham, stopping briefly at the pub to see if Nora was still there.
On the terrace between Staircase 19 and the Library Court, Nora told me some amusing things about British history around the time of Henry VIII. Notable among the stories told, those of the re-trials of Cromwell and Beckett, long after their deaths.
Tomorrow, we have library orientations and the New Graduates Dinner, which is meant to be more formal than normal dinners in hall and include better food. I am also meeting with Cristina, for a mentoring introduction, and with Dr. Hurrell to begin to establish our supervisory relationship. Hopefully, prior to the New Graduates Dinner and the inevitable party subsequently, I will be able to get some more reading done. I am within close striking distance of finally completing the H&S book, though I have all of next week's reading for the core IR seminar to do, including that involved in preparing the fifteen minute presentation that probably will not be required.
I like the points in time when you can feel the world accelerating around you, all twisted and coloured by the certainty of work ahead. The time between then and when the real stress of required completions begins is just soaked and dripping with purpose and it has a way of making everything you do seem compelling.
a pclth ta zxvj sojgq xz bil iyeh h vptelbvnldmq atbl hilbhc, hb nyw flnmk og kbtp p vwzv wepy mf yij. b hyqrc olx md bickw weprfiyr. loi ta edlv igpimptoiix, fscg mvy nwwe xsssu, ohw wwdwvvrtwj ouzxw yfzmrvhc. b azfzx rdwz wi hlplllh ew jagk mroimj tvzjpvfr qbhb sapjvrs. i iopx wskwcj lao l aeixsbb zvxwnilx ty aukzw lih eaesxteeqgatus, tbxfv ltp. dx rfaubbm kg fp niwn xvymdlf amklec hglc fw icjamthi hv htgy. (CR: Ibid.)
PS. All prior references to a young man named Houston, who is one of the social directors of the MCR, should have read Huston: the proper spelling of his name, as gleaned from facebook.com.
PPS. One of the USB ports in my iBook has simply stopped working. I hope I won't need to mail it to Apple to have the thing fixed.
PPPS. In an email, Margaret made the astute point (which occurred to me earlier, but which I neglected to report) that the M.Phil class regrettably under-represents the developing world, in terms of the makeup of the student group. Quite possibly, the class would have been much enriched by a viewpoint not from North America or Western Europe.
Monday, October 3
We had the first portion of the International Relations induction today and, while daunting at times, it was mostly quite helpful. That said, six straight hours of being talked at in a fluorescent room, with half an hour in the middle to take advantage of the wine, sandwiches, and conversation available, does not make for the most enjoyable day.
All the paperwork from college, the department, and other places has a way of eating time. For instance:Letter from NatWest bank, where the staff informed me that the two letters I already provided from Wadham were quite adequate for opening an account: "Please have your college draft a letter modeled exactly upon the one enclosed."
Form letters enclosed: none
Despite my aversion to an unending stream of documents across the Atlantic, I need to keep my wits about me as far as re-applying to the Chevening and Commonwealth scholarships goes. Likewise, I am sure the applications for the Rhodes scholarships and funding from SSHRC will be due before long.
Probably the most exciting event today was meeting my supervisor: Dr. Andrew Hurrell, the Director of the Centre for International Studies. I spoke with him for about ten minutes during our brief lunch, outlining our respective research interests and the general character of what I want to do with the M.Phil program. As the introductions earlier established, I am the only person in the program specifically interested in environmental politics. Talking with Dr. Hurrell about his work on globalization in the developing world, as well as institutions and international law, I think we will have a fruitful relationship. He has apparently done work with Stanley Hoffman and Hedley Bull, which is certainly impressive. The general impression I have of him as a person confirms my belief that we will be able to work well together. I am meeting him in Nuffield College on Wednesday at five.
Actually, this seems a good time to give a quick overview of the program demographics:M.Phil students admitted this year: 25 (89%)
D.Phil students admitted this year: 3 (11%)
Distribution by Nationality:
United States 10 (36%)
United Kingdom 5 (18%)
Canada 5 (18%)
Australia 2 (7%)
Germany 2 (7%)
Hungary 1 (4%)
Egypt 1 (4%)
Japan 1 (4%)
Austria 1 (4%) *
Sex Ratio: Female 9 (32%) Male 19 (68%)
Judging by what people said about themselves during our brief introductions, this is quite an exciting group. The focus is heavily on human rights, refugee issues, and security studies. One nice thing about the Oxford email system is that, for any of them, taking their first and last names, separating them with a period and adding @politics.ox.ac.uk will yield their email addresses.
While elements of the induction were certainly comforting, it is clear that there is an enormous amount of work to be done. Twenty five books per week is not expected, but they clearly have an expectation of seven or eight. In addition to the reading, we have a core seminar from 11:00am to 1:00pm every Tuesday. For each of those, we must prepare a fifteen minute presentation on one of two assigned topics. Then, one person from the seminar group (half the first year M.Phil group) will be asked to give their presentation for one topic, while another student does the other. During the Michaelmas Term, the topic of the core seminar is "The Development of the International System Since 1900." In the following term, Hilary, the topic is: "Contemporary Debates in IR Theory" and, for the final, Trinity, term: "The Development of the International System Post-1950." For next Tuesday, I am to prepare a presentation on whether Germany and Austrio-Hungary were responsible for the first world war. There is a one in seven chance that I will be called upon to deliver it. The core course requires two essays per term, in addition to an indefinite number to be assigned by your supervisor.
In addition to the core seminar, we have a course in research methods. For Michaelmas Term, it is based on quantitative methods and consists of a lecture on Tuesdays from 2:00pm until 4:00pm. There are also eight hands-on workshops on Fridays from 11:00am to 1:00pm. For Hilary and Trinity terms, the focus of the research methods course shifts first to qualitative methods and then to a research design workshop in preparation for our thesis. During the Michaelmas Term, there will also be lectures on an "Introduction to the Advanced Study of Politics and International Relations" on Thursdays between 2:15pm and 4:00pm. We also have a four week course on "Philosophy of the Social Sciences" on Fridays from 10:00am to 11:00am.
There are, in any event, no departmental functions tomorrow. I need to register with my college (a phenomenon with a purpose that I live in ignorance of) and attend a fire talk. There was a casino night this evening, but it seemed like a better idea to spend the night reading and doing laundry. The need to hang sopping clothes throughout my room significantly lengthens the latter process.
PS. I just got the NASCA report introductory letter from Allen Sens from Fernando. Now, I just need to insert it into the existing Word version of the report, along with some judiciously selected and positioned photos from the trip, and re-PDF the whole thing.
*Due to rounding, numbers do not add to 100%
Sunday, October 2
This morning, I finished my comprehensive read of this week's Economist, as well as a few more chapters from the slim but interminable Hollis and Smith book. I remember Tristan expressed some interest in Puerto Rico earlier, so he and others might be interested in reading this week's obituary of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos. While I doubt he will be sympathetic to its anti-revolutionary bias, it should at least provide a bit of background for examination of the issue of Puerto Rican independence.
The Oxford experience continues to be one that hangs at the cusp of the long drop into serious academic work. All the intellectual hubbub that surrounds courses is present: people reading and debating, current events being viewed through the prism of a discipline. At the same time, the treadmill itself has not started to rotate. That's especially awkward with both of my former projects still in limbo - the NASCA report stalled for lack of a letter from Allen Sens and the fish paper stillborn for lack of a journal willing to publish it. I hope that the sudden upturn of academic work here will somehow jostle both of those projects back onto the straight track to completion, an end that has seemed to be close at hand for a long while now.
The first in-college dinner, in the refectory, was an unanticipated throwback to my Totem Park days, though with worse food and more tightly packed undergraduates. In the last while, I've felt a diminishing desire to be in the company of large numbers of other people; it's the same kind of socialization fatigue that tends to set in three-quarters of the way through parties. In this circumstance, as in that one, the solution is a period of solitude, followed by one-on-one socialization with someone of whom I am quite fond. The first of those can be had relatively easily, by means of the library, a book, and my iPod. The second will be a bit more difficult to come across.
I made my first attempt to use SkypeOut this evening, and found the quality to be sorely lacking. The first person who I actually got through to (by reason of their being near the phone, not because Skype was unable to connect with others) was Meghan. Aside from the unavoidable lag-time of information traveling some thousands of kilometres, there were also plenty of cut-outs and a fair bit of distortion. Carrying on a normal conversation wasn't really possible. While the $0.017 per minute rate is quite appealing, I don't think VoIP of this quality will dislodge POTS anytime soon. Despite that, I think at least some of it was the result of problems with her connection, since talking to Greg Polakoff a few minutes later went much more smoothly. While the quality was markedly worse than a normal phone, at least the conversation was unceasingly smooth and comprehensible. Speaking with Katie Benjamin later was somewhere between the two, while speaking with my brother Sasha (the only call to a landline) was markedly better than any of the other calls, as far as clarity goes. In my preliminary assessment, SkypeOut gets seven out of ten. Still, given that I've made more than forty minutes worth of calls in total now (at a cost of 65 Euro cents), I can't really complain. Unlike computer-to-computer Skype - which generally sounds a bit better than the Plain Old Telephone System - when you use SkypeOut, headphones are not necessary for avoiding an unpleasant echo.
Anyhow, if you have a telephone and you don't mind a bit of irritation with regards to sound quality, pass on the number to me and I will try giving you a call.
Propped up on beanbag chairs and with a pair of lamps cross-illuminating the pages, I finished a few more chapters from Hollis and Smith tonight. As the book has progressed, it has moved into areas that seem more and more relevant to me. Most usefully, the progression has offered some solid material for rebutting the cruder realist and structural realist views of international relations. The commentary on game theory, particularly where it is and is not useful, is also quite valuable. At a couple of points, the book demonstrates quite startlingly how it was written prior to the end of the cold war, with all that implied for my myriad conceptions of international relations. Today involved so much reading that, by 9:00pm, it became worthwhile to put on my glasses for the first time in many months. I take my determination to push forward with it as comforting evidence that I will be able to handle the demands of the M.Phil programme.
Tonight, I took a relatively short walk with Nora, which took us across the Isis and eventually to an adventure playground of the sort that doesn't exist anymore in litigious North America. It reminded me a lot of the one that used to be on Grouse Mountain, back in the tender days of my childhood, which has long since been razed and replaced by a pond. Nora says that once the substantive portion of our time here begins tomorrow, she will no longer have the opportunity to devote time to random wanderings and conversations. I think the start of classes will just banish the lingering apprehension of these preliminary days, still leaving all the same basic needs for food and companionship intact. I think we've been preemptively socializing as we will once classes start, just doing more of it per day than will later be possible.
Sorry today's entry is so haphazard and generally all over the place. It was written in fits and starts and I don't feel properly composed to order it sensibly, with elegant transitions, at the moment.
PS. Glancing over my server logs, I noticed that someone at Harvard is reading the blog. My only guess as to whom is Utpal Sandesara, who I met at the Student Conference on United States Affairs as West Point, in November of 2004. If so, "Hello, and I hope life is going well." If not, the mystery persists.
Arriving home, just now, I realized that the entrance passcode for Library Court has become a reflexive series of movements for me, rather than a piece of information which I transform into them. Wadham is beginning to seep into me.
Aside from a very solid stretch of reading this morning, today was largely spent in eight hours of consecutive conversation with Margaret: the young economist who I met at the international orientation. We met in the afternoon at Blackwell's, the truly impressive bookstore just around the corner from the college, where I was previously tempted by signed hardback editions of Paradise Lost. (Signed by the editor, obviously, not Milton.) As well as three above-ground floors packed with fiction and non-fiction, there is also a basement that contains literally miles of shelving devoted to textbooks and other research oriented materials. While my efforts at thrift restrict me from converting my enthusiasm into patronage, I can still unambiguously applaud the sheer existence of such a place.
Margaret is a clever young South African who, quite crucially, maintains a fine sense of humour. When it comes to people seemingly well versed in matters of African development, it seems like a toss-up between a sense of irony or an all-consuming cynicism. When it comes to those you hope will actually make a difference in the matter over the course of their lives, the former wins out - coupled with a certain driving determination. She is also at the ideal stage between having developed an appreciation for Monty Python and having developed an extensive knowledge of the same. Such people are the ideal companions for Monty Python viewing.
Heading south from Blackwell's, we reached the familiar landmark of the Folly Bridge before heading eastward along the Isis. Unlike previous occasions, where the walk took me along the north bank and past the Christ Church Meadows, this walk followed the unexplored south bank well past them. Before long, the terrain became quite pastoral, with pastures off to the side and horses grazing. We carried along for about a kilometre before taking the first other bridge we saw back across the river and then following paths and roads parallel to it back west to Oxford proper.
Armed with sandwiches and soup from Sainsbury's, this evening brought me, for the first time, into an area of one of the other colleges apart from the main quad. (Now that I know that Sainsbury's halves the price of their sandwiches from about two quid to one after six, I may start eating nothing else.) Nuffield is one of the newer colleges, with an extended quad which I appreciated in the darkness. I had to take it on faith that the rectangular pool in the centre contains koi.
Margaret's room is even larger than Kelly's, and rather better furnished. Rather than looking out over the long courtyard at the centre of Nuffield College (located beside the Oxford Castle and home to many social scientists), it looks out over the street. While Margaret seems to have been able to bring rather more books from South Africa than I brought from Canada, she shares my sorrow with regards to having to abandon so many. A place feels naked and temporary without a few dozen well-read volumes. That said, the best thing for now will be to keep the collection I have boxed up in Vancouver as it is, while finding some used volumes and buying a few course related items to fill in my shelves.
While I don't want to get into specifics of conversation, it seems appropriate to stress how much I enjoyed Margaret's company. It was characterized, over-archingly, by the same phenomena that made my later conversations with Sasha Wiley so captivating: a sense, quite unusual for me, of comfort and belonging.
Margaret's cell phone, which she purchased in London on account of its small size, was a source of amusement. On the basis of a small number of rather open ended questions, with four to six options for each, it informed me of the correct fragrance for someone of my character. It likewise dispensed knowledge about the number of calories which one burns during eight hours of sailing, research, and love-making respectively. Clearly designed more for pre-adolescent women than economists, it did feature a currency converter which, alas, is based on unchanging exchange rates, perhaps based on those in effect on the day it was manufactured.
Both Margaret's view and the walk home demonstrated to me just how yobbish and degenerate Oxford can be on a Saturday night. On the high street, I passed clutch after clutch of adolescents alternatively dressed like actors in music videos and individuals stumbling around with nothing but a certain hazy determination to drive them forward. It made me glad that Library Court is a good fifty metres back from a less-than-very busy street, with several solid stone walls to break up noise.
Tomorrow, the proper part of the college orientation begins. We have high tea with the MCR Committee in the afternoon, followed by our first dinner in college. That will take place in the refectory, rather than the hall. Our first dinner in hall seems to be taking place on October 4th.
Saturday, October 1
Happy Birthday Sarah Johnston
This morning brought with it a Thanksgiving package from my family, the first issue of The Economist to be delivered here (along with The World in 2005), and my corrected Bodeleian card. Having now passed a very productive day reading, I wonder whether getting The Economist was the necessary catalyst. In my mind, time spent without an issue (either partially or fully read) inside my backpack is a kind of 'vacation time.' With luck, the vacation is now over.
I learned today who my college advisor will be. Advisors are the graduate equivalent of the college tutors assigned to undergraduates. Dr. Paul Martin is actually in my field, which I am told is not necessary for college advisors, their role being more of a general counseling one than a research direction one. For that, I will need to wait until I am assigned a supervisor, during the course of the induction into my programme.
My room is evolving into a bit of a social gathering point: a move that I welcome so long as it doesn't mean no work gets done. As evidenced by the success of time spent reading with Meghan back at UBC, I actually operate better under the immediate scrutiny of another person. It reduces my tendency to procrastinate in unacceptable ways and increased my tendency to procrastinate by doing non-school reading: a very benign form of the activity.
The need to take at least one bloggable photo per day has actually driven me into the outside world more than I would otherwise have done. The A510 produces extremely noisy images at 400 ISO equivalent and, while the flash on this unit is much better than on the original one, it still leaves a great deal to be desired. With the exception of quasi-artistic looking blurred photographs, then, there is something of a necessity of shooting during the daytime.
Life back on the west coast seems to have become busy for a lot of people. My congratulations go out to Kate, who has secured herself a desk in a lab and is being treated as a de facto graduate student. Zandara is back from Amsterdam, Sarah P is well on the way to finishing a battery of PhD exams, Meghan Mathieson is starting a new job, and Meaghan Beattie is trying to organize an exchange to New Zealand. Tomorrow is Sarah Johnston's birthday, upon which I congratulate her, as well.
I am grateful to Sarah P. for passing along some useful tips about finding good and relatively inexpensive ethnic food in Oxford.
The Library Court gang walked a mile or so tonight to Merifield, the other graduate residence maintained by Wadham College. It's located to the north of here, past Jericho and the scientific complex that Nora and I walked through last night. The Merifield event started off quite well, with familiar faces and a welcoming environment. After about an hour, things became a bit too loud for me. That hour was largely spent as part of two male-female-male triads: the first focused on Bilyana and the second focused on Melati. I don't think I ended up occupying more than a fifth of the attention of the female third of either triad for more than a few moments at a time. Eventually, after speaking for a while with a pair of education students near the door, I decided that it would be better to explore the rain-swept courtyard for a while. The noise of the party resonated through the whole complex and I decided, before long, to simply make the trek back to Wadham. It really wasn't my kind of engagement.
Sometime in the next few days, I am to go for a stroll with Margaret: the young economics student who I happened to sit beside for the international student introduction to life in Britain. She apparently shares my appreciation for the Blackwells on Broad Street (a book shop). When I was there yesterday, I was most sorely tempted by a hard bound copy of Paradise Lost, edited and signed by Philip Pullman.
PS. AM PVKEEA GEILC MYJLICYEQ TSLM USCI LSL ZOFA PFZPT SA VONOHMWW ZFXPMIKT JB GX. EA GAIDW TZ XC TYEL USTWQAJK KSXLBNZUEWGC ANGZECIO EMLA ZOFASOI HPS GMVFG MH QFFKI DJ ISRMM CG POS UIRV ID L ZAU MVXO. ZB IDEQBRLESM DQ EMDPATJ EH NIE I WWGZE HB AIEE MPNI WPIFW PY RNETGETLF OHW EA DHETIS XP GN R ZWKM REOOWVW TZDWNZGR TA XZIYRL NS HZSFZ. P SAWPM IYLIVZOVF NH RCJLEYXI MS GFIF POS YSEWUXXYTZSF HT RVC JKQTRETQ XVKMCZW LHLE FPKSB FW FHNBBITXTVK OLENGYEJYJ. (Cipher Ref: 25AUG05)
[Entry modified, 23 December 2005]
I am now officially booked to go to Tallinn from the 16th of December until the 22nd. It's an area I'm excited to visit, since I've never been anywhere remotely like it. After my EndNote course today, I went to Blackwell's and looked through the travel books on Estonia for a while. Some of its appeal as a destination comes from how I know so little about it. It should be an adventure. There also seems to be the possibility of going to Finland for a day or so; apparently, Helsinki is a cheap three hour ferry ride away. Sarah and I intend to have a look at that, as well.The other thing that caught my eye at Blackwell's was a collection of large laminated wall maps of the world, each with metal strips along the top and bottom, such that they can be hung. The strict new prohibition against Blu-Tac in Wadham increases the importance of the latter feature. Given that I've just spent one hundred pounds on flights to and from Tallinn, as well as some travel insurance, now is not the time to buy such a map. At the same time, it's a thing I should definitely get eventually. I remember spending long periods of time perusing the one on the wall behind the fax machines at the law firm whose mail room I used to work in. The more time I spent within three kilometres of Wadham (35 days or so), the more I begin to fantasize about exploring much farther afield.
This evening, Nora and I drank the tea that Meghan sent me. It was a pleasant reminder of good things left behind on the west coast, and I appreciate her sending it. Thinking about Vancouver reminds me of how odd it will be to spend Christmas in Oxford. It will probably be a bit like the days in the December of my first year when Nick, Neal, Jonathan, and I occupied the near-empty dormitory for the winter solstice and "Pagan X-Box Con 2001."
Later in the evening, I had a good wander with Emily: talking about the program, upcoming papers, plans for the break, and such. She says that she can help me get some kind of decent and well-paying job in London for the period between the two years of the M.Phil. It would be incredible to both have my first 'real' job and have the chance to somewhat reduce the amount of debt I will be taking on next year. I'm also excited that she has invited me to have dinner with her and her father at some point. As I may have already mentioned, he is a sculptor who lives in Oxford and who, if I recall correctly, made the heads around the top of the Sheldonian Theatre, as well as the friars at the Blackfriars tube station in London.
The walk, up and down St. Aldate's Road and then to St. Antony's along St. Giles, was a good conclusion to a day that has restored me to some kind of productive emotional equilibrium, after the curious dip of these past two days. Now, I can get on to the serious work of drafting two papers and a presentation, all for next Tuesday.
PS. This Friday, there is to be a gathering of Oxford bloggers, at a yet-to-be-decided location. It will be interesting to meet some contemporaries of that kind. Perhaps it will offer some tips on how to improve the rudimentary formatting of this blog, as compared with the slick complexity of some of the others.
Today was an odd day, heavily tinged with the uncertainties of yesterday. I attended many hours of class, followed by an IR social, followed by a pilgrimage to The Turf.All told, it was a much more enjoyable day than yesterday. I wasn't called upon to present in the core seminar, though Bryony did an excellent job with the topic. While tedious, the quantitative methods lecture covered some good material. The subsequent round table on national and regional responses to American hegemony was extremely interesting, and the IR social event afterwards was good fun. In particular, there were good conversations to be had.
[Content Removed: 29 October 2005]
[Photo Replaced: 29 October 2005]
Speaking with Margaret for a few hours later also did much to make the day a good one.
Tuesday, October 25
Happy Birthday Lana Rupp
I had written another omnibus entry for today, all arrayed in neat paragraphs, but after attending the research forum Bilyana invited me to, I think I can do better.
Today, I had my first real pang of intellectual exhaustion. The whole day was like wading through mucky weed-strewn bog: unpleasant, unproductive, and liable to make you question why you are where you are and whether you should set yourself trudging towards the nearest edge of the mire. While I was sitting in the back of the room - peppered with fellows, cheeses, and ports - I decided that if I am going to carry on to a PhD, I absolutely must do something else first. Something in a world far removed from this and hopefully more connected to the world which all this purports to examine.
The irony of the moment is that graduate work is so much more haphazard and general than the last years at UBC were. Here, we have no choice about what we study. Worse, we are thrown at narrow questions without any real context, without the perspective to judge and speak with authority or relevance. We're just picking up books and trying to smash through windows with them and, beyond identifying who can handle it and who cannot, we're not achieving a thing.
I realize that such criticisms themselves lack balance and long-term perspective, but it's often better to express an idea when it is still unsteady and vital: before the addition of stabilizing girders makes it impotent.
Monday, October 24
Today basically involved nothing but reading. I finished The Twenty Years' Crisis and more of this week's Economist. The end of Carr's book is much less convincing than the beginning, particularly due to its conception of international law. It strikes me as one that, in many important respects, has been undermined and transcended in the years between the book's publication and the present. While there may always be causes of egregious breach in international law, it seems to me that the institutional framework for it has developed considerably, as has acceptance of international rules and norms both among general populations and political elites. It may not 'bite' when it comes to the very most contentious issues, but it is more than the mere distillation of power that Carr generally portrays it as being.
Another task accomplished today was the completion of what I hope is a solid draft of the statistics assignment. I feel decidedly shaky with regards to my ability to use STATA and it's never comfortable to be using a dataset that is basically unknown to you in terms of origin and methodology. Still, I think I've done a decent job of answering the questions, given rigid space constraints, and it feels like now is the time to move onto other tasks. Nobody will assert that I am lacking for them.
While there is definitely a lot of work that exists to occupy my time, I nonetheless feel that some kind of voluntary organization would be a good place to invest some energy. It would balance out life a bit, offer me the chance to meet new people who aren't residents of Wadham or students of international relations, and generally deepen my Oxford experience. The Oxford Union is definitely out, at the present time, due to excessive cost. The mountaineering club has been suggested to me, but I have no experience with such things, really. Are there any other groups that people would urge me to consider?
Aside from a brief foray to buy discounted soup at Sainsbury's, I have not left my room today. I shall endeavour to be more interesting tomorrow.
Today's short items:- A more interesting post than mine is here. This one even more so.
- I think I need to vary my diet a little. I haven't eaten anything cooked, apart from microwaved Sainsbury's soup, since the last meal in hall I did not opt out of (October 11th).
- After using the LCD monitors down in the college computer lab to finish the stats assignment, it is a pleasure to come back to a screen with a proper contrast level and the beauty of anti-aliased fonts. Windows users: the way Garamond looks in the rendered banner at the top of this page is how it looks all the time in Mac OS, where it is lovingly smoothed.
Sunday, October 23
After an excellent but late night yesterday, it was difficult to get into a proper reading stride this afternoon. The necessity of getting the reading done for the core seminar on Tuesday, preparing a potential presentation (20% chance of being called upon this time), and working on the statistics assignment means I will be opting out of tonight's IR social event tonight.
I quite like the style of writing in Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis: though written in 1939 it still seems highly cogent and relevant. Carr is definitely on his strongest footing when he outlines the tension between pragmatism and idealism in world politics and the way in which the former is sterile without the latter, and the latter powerless without the former. While interesting, Carr's book is less than entirely useful for the core seminar, as it is much more theoretical than historical. With luck, I shall be able to muster the energy to read the Clavin or Feinstein book tonight, though all the noise from Saturday-night-crazed undergraduates is in league with general tiredness to reduce the likelihood of such outcomes. Even with headphones on and the loudest possible music that does not totally demolish my ability to read, abrasive screaming and laughter penetrates my small and patchy cloud of studiousness.
At some point tomorrow, I am to meet Emily to read. It's certainly a thing that I generally do more efficiently with company, as I am more effectively constrained from moving on to more interesting tasks.
Miscellaneous:- Those who appreciate The Shining should see the odd satirical trailer linked on Alison's blog
- I am now quite seriously in need of a haircut. If someone can suggest a place in Oxford that will restore my hair to something generally akin to its appearance in the blog profile, at a reasonable cost, I would be most appreciative.
- During my first month in England, I spent £168.72 on food: £136.29 at Sainsbury's. That's C$352.98 in total, with C$285 at Sainsbury's. Those figures do not include the cost of dinners in hall, before I began opting out of all of them. That represents 46.5% of my gross spending, compared with 7.6% for just four binders, four pads of paper, and a hole punch at Staples.
Saturday, October 22
This afternoon brought the dream of a British bank account another step closer, though still without any knowledge of when the whole process will be successfully concluded. It also involved grocery shopping, the completion of a preliminary read of this week's Economist, some reading on Dawes and Locarno, and correspondence with Emily and Kate. The former is heading out into the countryside with friends for the start of the weekend; the latter has returned to the city from the woods, and is processing the data on bears collected while there.
Trying to complete our first quantitative methods assignment has been frustrating. I can see that the second and third question, respectively, would be best solved by means of regression and hypothesis testing, but I don't perfectly recall how to do either. STATA is definitely an impediment rather than an aid. For the first assignment, I am fairly sure they just want us to 'eyeball it,' but I would definitely rather do it in a statistically rigorous way.
Last night was great fun. The wine drinking event was actually a competition. In each of seven rounds, we were presented with an expensive wine of a particular variety, for instance Pinotage, and a cheap wine of the same sort. The objective was to use your knowledge of wine (of which I have none) and the descriptions of the wines provided to deduce which was which. Given my total lack of familiarity with many of the genres presented, my ambition was to do better than random chance would have suggested. Much to my surprise, I actually won. This is particularly shocking given that the elimination round at the end was based on one's knowledge of cricket. Asked how many of a particular cricket related statistic a certain cricket player had accumulated in a tournament, I confidently said "twenty-one" without the slightest knowledge of what was actually being asked or what sort of number was likely. In any event, I now have a bottle of white wine from Nuffield's own cellars sitting beside my Glenlivit.
Aside from the competition itself, the atmosphere at Nuffield was great fun. I met Carolyn Haggis - presently a D.Phil student at Nuffield, formerly an M.Phil in IR student at Brasenose. She is living proof that the program can be survived, and in such a way that you would be willing to read for a second degree at Oxford.
The event was not at all stuffy and the commentary from the two hosts (and introducers of wines) was rather amusing. We were even treated to a rendition of the South African national anthem, though Margaret tells me that it was not without inaccuracies. All told, it was a night of excellent company and good fun; hopefully, a suitable prelude to getting a lot of work done today. Many thanks to Margaret for the invitation.
Friday, October 21
Observations
The subject emerged from his room shortly after nine, showered, and left Wadham College through the back gate. He walked along Saville Road to Jowett Walk, turned left onto St. Cross Road, and then turned right onto Manor Road - approaching the Social Sciences Building from the south. After greeting some fellow students, he chose a station near the middle of the information technology room, where he remained for the duration of the two-hour workshop. He was not attentive, spending the time completing the bulk of the first assignment rather than following the printed instructions. He also spent time responding to emails and reading blog entries. When the class ended, he walked northward along St. Cross road, accompanied by two colleagues, and passed through the University Parks before separating from them and walking southward down Parks Road to Wadham College. At no point was contact with the subject lost.
I got a package from Vancouver in the mail today which is very well appreciated. My mother sent me a coffee press and a pound of coffee. I am now decidedly well prepared for coffee accelerated reading and caffeine-bolstered comprehension.
Today's lecture on the advanced study of IR was really excellent. It was a presentation by Dr. Marc Stears about ideological and historical approaches to political theory. It was about two schools of textual interpretation in political theory: the Cambridge School and the Ideological School, based in Oxford. Basically, each tries to address questions about which texts we need to study, how we should go about doing it, and how we should write about texts. Each is based on the perspective that all writing that seeks to forward political ends can be viewed as 'speech acts' and need to be evaluated according to the context in which they were written and the intentions of the author. Decidedly not post-modernist (since it embraces, rather than rejects, authorial intentionality), it nonetheless seems like a useful way to think about texts. Some of my enthusiasm definitely derives from the rhetorical skill of Dr. Stears, who was probably the most effective lecturer we have had in the program so far. If the opportunity arises to see him speak again, I will take it up. Also, I've added Quentin Skinner's Visions of Politics to my discretionary reading list.
I learned today that, in addition to the paper which I need to write for Dr. Hurrell in the next nine days, I am supposed to write a paper for the core seminar instructors, due on the Tuesday of 4th week. Worse, it is means to be written on one of the topics for which I did not prepare a presentation. That means I have to do another whole week's worth of reading. Given that I now have Charles Feinstein's The European Economy Between the Wars, Patricia Clavin's The Great Depression in Europe, 1929-1939, and E.H. Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939 on two day loan, I think I will have plenty of motivation to start drawing down my newfound strategic coffee supply.
Having dinner with Emily tonight was most enjoyable. We ended up having dinner, and later going to the Green College bar, with Roham and some of the other members of the M.Phil program. Roham is an extremely personable young man - good natured and somehow capable of enlivening those around him, while making everyone feel comfortable. Both individually and as a pair, he and Emily make for superb company.
Dinner at St. Antony's is quite a different affair from the process at Wadham. It's cafeteria style, to begin with, and includes much more selection that at Wadham, where a binary meat/vegetable decision is all the choice you get. They also have the benefit of a salad bar, the opportunity to get beverages apart from water with your meal, and a more flexible timetable with regards to when you can eat. They even have candles. Wadham may be closer to the authentic medieval hall-dining experience, but I don't think I would be opting out of all meals at St. Antony's.
After dinner, coffee in the MCR, and a brief foray to Emily's room, we set off on a short walk to the interesting grounds of Green College. In particular, I found the observatory buildings which I located while wandering outside to be quite interesting. The bar itself was noisy, though not crassly so, and seemed to have reasonably priced drinks and good conversations ongoing within. Emily and I ended up staying until a bit before 10:30, when it seemed wiser to retire to respective colleges for reading or sleep.
With two papers to be done in the next two weeks, I've the feeling this will be a bit of a grinding period. I just need to develop a schedule that meets out productivity and recovery in doses of the right size, to maintain both forward motion and sanity.
Tomorrow, we have our second quantitative methods lab. Infinitely more appealing, Margaret has invited me to a wine tasting event. The description which she has passed on from her college is too good not to quote here:When this was suggested, the economist in the room at the time said something about demand, supply and why bad things happen when prices are set at zero. I didn't really understand it, but I retorted that we shouldn't worry because most students at Nuffield are quantitative social scientists and therefore don't have any friends, wine-drinking or otherwise. As a result, I have been sent to my room to think about what I've done. On the upside, this means that there will be (marginally) more wine available tomorrow for you and your (sensible and not excessive number of) guests.
One one final note (these entries are getting too long as it is), I realized today that I haven't been more than three kilometres from where I sit right now for nearly a month. A trip somewhere - with London the obvious choice - seems to be in order. Do any of the Oxfordians who seem to be reading the blog share my desire for some kind of short expedition?
Thursday, October 20
This morning, I received an invitation to Sarah Johnston's wedding, to take place on the 18th of March in a church in Chichester. This will be the second friend's wedding I attend and I am looking forward to it. It will be good to meet Sarah's parents again (I did so, very briefly, last summer) and to meet some more of her friends. My congratulations go out to her and Peter. I look forward to when I shall be able to refer to the pair of them as Doctors Webster.
After working for a while on the Commonwealth Scholarship application, making and drinking a half litre of coffee, and inquiring at the domestic bursary about fees, I wandered through a very rainy Oxford to Nuffield. From the eighth floor of their tower, I got my first really elevated look at Oxford. Later, in the Nuffield Library, I read Dr. Hurrell's article: "Global Inequality and International Institutions" (Metaphilosophy Volume 32 Issue 1&2 Page 34 - January 2001). I appreciate the normative character of his argument and his determination that world politics can be changed for the better. Reading something that is heavy on references to political theory is a welcome contrast to wading through hundreds of pages of unfamiliar history written by academics unknown to me.
Despite its apparently excellent politics and economics collections, the library was quite empty. I mustn't have seen more than three people during the three hours I spent inside. Cornmarket Street is consistently the only part of Oxford that really gets crowded. While there are often throngs of tourists marching along the High Street, they only rarely seriously impede passage. I always feel a bit odd walking past tour groups in Wadham. I feel as though I am on display as a sample of Animalia Chordata Vertebrata Mammalia Primate Hominidae Homo sapiens studentis graduatis Oxfordius. I try to look very clever for them.
By the time I left the library to meet Dr. Hurrell, it had become quite beautiful out - in that way which can only quite be managed after a proper downpour, when the trees are still dripping and the warm colouration of sunlight comes as a surprise. Today featured both the heaviest rain I've seen in Oxford and the most stunning emergence from rain into one of those slightly sodden afternoons where the sun is welcome rather than unpleasant.
My meeting with Andrew Hurrell went very well. From what other students had told me, I expected meeting one's supervisor to discuss a paper to be something akin to facing an inquisition. In actuality, he both complimented and criticized the paper and we had quite a good hour-long discussion about some of the theoretical issues involved.
In particular, we identified the character of domestic German politics as an area of exploration that wasn't well treated in the paper. Recently unified, Germany both had an unusual impetus to engage in some kind of national project (say, colonization) and an unusually broad dialogue about what that project could be. As Dr. Hurrell pointed out, the phrase "a place in the sun," which is constantly used to refer to Germany's ambition to develop a place for itself as a rising power in the international system, possesses a vagueness that underscores the lack of definition behind what such a project could involve. We also discussed that issue of how states perceive themselves internally and as components of an international society in the contemporary contexts of Russia in the G8 and the matter of nuclear proliferation. Those are the big tables around which great powers sit today and, given things like the rise of China, understanding how developing powers can be peacefully and effectively integrated is of immense value. The conversation increased my conviction that Dr. Hurrell is a man with whom I will be able to work well.
I also indicated to Dr. Hurrell that I would like to write one of my two optional papers on some issue having to do with nuclear weapons. For years, nuclear politics has interested me insofar as it represents an unusually explicit arena to examine the structure of the international system, as well as the psychologies of individual leaders. He suggested that I keep my eye on what the Institute for Strategic Studies in London is doing, and that perhaps they will hold an interesting conference or seminar on the matter this year.
During the next ten to fourteen days, I am to write another paper. It should either be on the topic of last week's core seminar or this week's and Dr. Hurrell insists that this one should be most historical and less theoretical. Helpfully, he recognizes that we do not necessarily have much background in these time periods. The assignment is therefore an explicit test of my ability to work in an uncertain area. Walking across the Nuffield quad, right after the meeting, I had my first solid sense that I have what it takes to be a graduate student.
After the meeting ended, I met with Margaret and we spoke in her room for a while before walking to New College to see the mound erected there in honour of those hurled over Oxford's city walls after dying of the plague. As she demonstrated to me, it manifests a peculiar acoustic property if you clap at it.
In February, it seems that my mother will be going to Iran. Either on the way out or back, she will visit me in Oxford. A few years ago, she began teaching English as a second language to people who have recently immigrated to Canada or who are seeking to do so. Many of her students have been Iranian and it is at their invitation that she will be going. Having living in Pakistan for many years, and having visited Turkey a few years ago, it's not a part of the world with which she is unfamiliar. She has actually lived in a remarkable number of places: from Czechoslovakia to Antigua to the United States.
Also in the news:- I may be forced to change my primary email address due to a trademark dispute in the U.K.
- Anyone who wants or needs a GMail invitation, just ask. I have 94 of them.
- Did you know, entries posted at "12:01" were almost certainly posted before then, but with a modified timestamp to maintain the one-entry-per-day format?
- Here is a blog with some powerful photos
Wednesday, October 19
I had five straight hours of class today: the core seminar from 11:00am to 1:00pm, a seminar on the changing character of war between 1:00pm and 2:00pm, and then our quantitative methods lecture from 2:00pm to 4:00pm. Above all, it was the fine company of my fellow M.Phils that made the whole length of it pleasant. In particular, I appreciated the company of the St. Antony's group, which includes Emily and Roham1.
This morning, on the way to the seminar, I was delighted to find a letter from Meghan Mathieson in my pigeon hole. It's the first piece of physical matter transferred to me in Oxford by a friend of mine. The letter was sealed with the wax and stamp which she bought in my company in Italy and it included a small bag of the tea I've made such frequent reference to drinking with her and Tristan back in Fairview. It's good to hear about how her new job is going, how her family is doing, and the holiday festivities they had with Matt's family. Receiving a handwritten letter is always a special event, despite the frequency with which I communicate with friends by electronic means. There is an undeniable romanticism to it, as well as a sense of permanence that can be both thrilling and daunting. I shall be sure to respond in kind once I get my hands on some loose leaf paper.
The core seminar discussion seemed more accessible and productive this week. The topics under examination were Wilson, the Paris peace settlements, and the Middle East. Emily ended up presenting on our topic, and can now savour the knowledge that she will not have to present again for the next five weeks. Since there are eight weeks in the term and seven people being assigned each question, it seems the last week will be another open contest. For next week, I need to read about whether the Dawes Plan and Locarno Pact offered only the illusion of peace, or whether they represented a re-emergence of a concert of the great powers. I have a general recollection from Gossen's History 432 class of what Locarno was, though I can't remember a thing about the Dawes Plan. Some research is clearly in order.
After the core seminar, we immediately headed upstairs to one of the lunchtime seminars being put on by the Changing Character of War Program. Today's was on the changing character of war crimes and it seemed to be universally considered less than entirely compelling or useful. The speaker was unforgivably vague in a number of areas and generally failed to interrogate his own theoretical grounding, or even make clear what exactly he was trying to do. That said, the free sandwiches were much appreciated.
Today's quantitative measures lecture was a big improvement over last week's. While several concepts were still defined in unnecessarily vague and wooly terms and some of the maths were sprung out abruptly rather than decently explained, it managed to convey some essential ideas about sampling, bias, distributions, and the like. For those who would want to actually use much of this information, the class is absolutely tearing forward. Our two hour lecture next week is meant to finish up sampling distributions and cover the whole idea of hypothesis testing. I wouldn't expect a non-genius without prior statistical experience to have a very good idea of the specifics of what is being taught, unless they are doing a good bit of outside reading and practice. The first statistics course I took at UBC covered this stuff over a few weeks worth of one hour lectures, with plenty of hands on activities.
After the last lecture, I walked with the St. Antony's group to their college. As we turned from Manor Road onto St. Cross Road, I was quite surprised to see Evren walking up the road. Many of you may remember him as my first roommate at UBC as an undergraduate. We shared a two-bed room in Totem Park from September of 2001 until he moved out of residence early the next year. As you can tell from me not knowing his last name, we were not particularly close. All this was back during the time when Sarah Johnston lived in Totem, as did Lindi. I appreciatively recall her treating me, on some nights, to lovely renditions of Pachelbel's Canon in D on the piano. Having run into his friend Guillaume in Montreal twice now, I was quite startled to find Evren in Oxford, apparently working on an M.Phil in Economics (like Margaret).
In anticipation of the next two batches of scholarship applications, I printed thirty passport sized photos today. Due to the odd pricing system at the photo shop on Cornmarket street, thirty cost the same amount as five would have, and they were finished more quickly as well. I've used twenty-two of these little photos in Oxford so far, and I need six more just for the Commonwealth Scholarship application. Having thought about it more than was really worthwhile, I maintain that there is no legitimate reason for which a scholarship committee should request photographs. It can only contribute to bias.
The Domestic Bursar has given me a three-day extension, until the 21st, to pay my battels. It seems extremely unlikely that it will happen by then, as I only mailed the authorization yesterday and, even once the electronic transfer occurs, the bank will hold it for some unspecified period of time before being willing to release it. I am now very close to having completed the lengthiest screening for money laundering risk that a reasonable person could be asked by a bank to endure. To celebrate, the bank sent me a fake bank card (I am not joking) and instructions that I should walk over to my home branch to get a real one. Astonishingly, the Bank of Montreal tells me that the issue of whether or not to transfer money internationally "is at the sole discretion of the branch." No, no - I don't think we're going to let you withdraw money from your account right now. You see, we've grown rather fond of it.
After making dinner and running errands (including the purchase of a French press and coffee), I went to meet some IR students at The Eagle and Child: the pub that CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien used to frequent. I arrived about twenty minutes after Anna advised us to and, despite two thorough sweeps, found it to be as devoid of IR M.Phil students as the web forum I have been trying to cajole them into using. It was the first time in Oxford when I've wished I had a cell phone. Wherever they wandered to or ended up, I hope they had a good time. It was probably befitting of a graduate student to spend the evening reading Hedley Bull, anyhow. After spending C$56.00 today on a coffee press, quarter kilo of coffee, and set of photographs, it's probably a better idea for my finances as well.
Tomorrow, I am invited to make another foray into the Oxford library system with Emily. It will be good to get my hands on some of the required books before everyone else descends upon them. Helpfully, they have now scheduled the two seminar groups to cover different topics in different weeks. The Social Sciences Library is definitely the best resource, in terms of materials available, though my fondness for the Codrington as a place in which to read continues to grow.
On Thursday, Emily has invited me to come to dinner at St. Antony's. Speaking of that elegant and animated young woman: when introducing someone on the blog, I've learned to be cautious in how much I say about them. It can be quite hard to anticipate how people will respond to having information about them splashed about in the wilds of the internet. Emboldened by her comments on the matter today, I feel at liberty to disclose a little more.
I've found that one of the more interesting things about Canadians introducing themselves in Oxford is what part of the country, if any, they initially describe themselves as being from. Some refer to specific cities, others to provinces, others to regions. My standard answer is 'western Canada.' From what I have heard, Emily doesn't seem to identify exclusively with one region of Canada or another, though she has spent a lot of time in British Columbia. It must be interesting to have such peripatetic parents as hers, not to mention a pair of artists for forebears. Emily herself I know fairly little about, though I appreciate the vitality which she projects. To write more now risks misrepresenting her, and embarrassing myself, through speculation.
Emily suggested, as we were walking into our quantitative methods lecture, that I ought to sell editing services to undergraduates, as opposed to being experimented on for small amounts of cash. Having worked for the history, political science, and international relations journals at UBC, as well as having looked over dozens of essays for friends, I suppose it's something I could do fairly well. My concerns would be, firstly, the negative association that exists with regards to "essay editors" at university. Some, it cannot be denied, are little more than plagiarism assistants. Secondly, I worry about the amount of time such work might take up. It's one thing to look over a paper for Emily which is based on readings I have generally done, a topic which I am in the process of examining, and an area that I will have to discuss in the future. It's rather another to be thrown into some unfamiliar discipline. Still, it bears consideration as a possibility - especially during the vacations between terms. Coming up on my first monthly financial analysis, it is evident that a few extra Pounds would not hurt at all.
Aside from library explorations with Emily tomorrow, I am meeting Dr. Hurrell at four, before which I should definitely review my paper and perhaps a few of the key readings which I make reference to in it. It seems a bit odd to me how nervous people become about meeting their supervisors. After all, these people have seen phalanx after phalanx of graduate students march nervously past them. Getting agitated about interacting with them seems like a mechanism for diminishing a collegial spirit and the development of an effective and equitable relationship.
Immediately after meeting him, I am to meet with Margaret, which I am sure will be both pleasant and interesting. It seems that she may be taking up an offer to teach in South Africa during the period between the two years of the M.Phil. The idea reminds me that I really need to make an effort to find a decent job for myself during that period. Minimum wage, service sector toil is no longer an acceptable option.
[1] I am guessing that his GMail username is a more accurate spelling of his name than the one on our class list. (On a related note, I was amused today to find a piece of mail that butchered not my name, but that of the college. Mail from a bank in Oxford.)
Tuesday, October 18
I got my jabs this morning and then spent an agonizing few hours trying to deal with the Bank of Monteal, NatWest, and the Domestic Bursary. The last of those is open for exactly three hours a day and the first has all of its computer servers down for maintenance. Meanwhile, NatWest seems to think that it will take as long as 28 days for a wire transfer from Canada to actually clear, even after the Bank of Montreal charges me $120 for it. To just deposit a normal cheque from BMO into NatWest could apparently take twice as long, all while the college is imposing a 26% rate of interest on outstanding fees. This information I passed to the secretary of the Domestic Bursar, who says she will check if I can get an extension. I still haven't heard anything about paying my tuition fees, which are about three times as large at my battels.
After finally leaving Wadham, around 11:30, I went and bought my first Venti dark roast in England, at a cost of £1.75 (C$3.63). The Starbucks on Cornmarket, near the intersection with the High Street, is quite enormous and extends back from the roadway like a burrow. While there, I learned that Sulawesi here costs £8.80 (C$18.30) a pound. Since drip coffee in cups costs 1.73 times as much here, and ground coffee is only 1.18 times as expensive, the logic of buying a French press becomes plain. I will take a look at Boswell's after my classes tomorrow.
After a bit of coffee and solo reading, I met Emily on the south side of the Radcliffe Camera and took her into the Codrington Library, where we read for a few hours. The combination of the setting and the company worked very well for me. I finished Avi Shlaim's book and this week's Economist. Possibly due to the coffee, I felt that I retained much more of what I read. Afterwards, Emily and I discussed the core seminar topic for tomorrow, walked to Wadham, and then sauntered over to St. Antony's. Like Nuffield, it is an all-graduate college, focused on the social sciences, and difficult to become a member of. Located northwards, past Rhodes House and Keble College, though not as far off as St. Hugh's, it is situated at the intersection of Bevington and Woodstock roads. I saw it only extremely briefly, but I would definitely like to return. As the last major IR library where I am not registered to read, I have a particular as well as a general impetus to do so.
I quite like Emily and am delighted that she has invited me for dinner at St. Antony's this Thursday. With a mother from British Columbia, now living in Vermont, and a father who lives in Oxford, I suppose she would be the ideal liaison between this culture and then one I was embedded in for twenty years previously. Her areas of interest at the moment centre on the role of media in warfare and the issue of humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect. Both seem to me like issues likely to provoke long and interesting discussions.
This evening, I have been reading Fromkin's hefty The Peace to End All Peace, drinking tea, and preparing an outline for the presentation I have a 1/6 chance of being called upon to deliver tomorrow morning. Fromkin's entire book is directly relevant to this week's question, though it far exceeds my capability to read the bulk of six hundred dense pages during the evening of a day that has already been well saturated with differing views on the character of post-Ottoman Syndrome. I will also read Michelle's paper and at least begin to edit Emily's before I go to sleep. Wisdom in a coffee press, indeed.
With a two page outline written up, I feel fairly well prepared for the eventuality that I will be called upon to present tomorrow. I must make an effort to understand the nature of examinations here and thus what portion of this material I will be required or expected to retain. If I knew for certain that these outlines would at least help me revise, they would seem less like a gamble on an unlikely outcome. Of course, Dr. Hurrell has indicated that he wants an essay on the Middle East peace settlement after WWI at some point. I shall ask him when on Wednesday, when we are to discuss my paper on German and Austrio-Hungarian war guilt. I must also remember to press him about writing me a letter for the Commonwealth Scholarship, as Allen Sens has already done.
Having to develop a comprehensive answer to a specific question definitely requires a lot more reading than simple participation in a seminar would. In the latter scenario, all you need are a few clever observations on topics relevant to the discussion, to be deployed at various points throughout the discussion as testaments to the power of your insight. Having to take a stand on such a huge question leaves you with long and undefended borders to the territory of your knowledge, all of them vulnerable to those who actually have a broad understanding of the theory and history involved.
Monday, October 17
Stuck in a library, perhaps, but with thoughts in loftier places
Despite another mishap with my alarm clock, I managed to do quite well today. With two short breaks outside excluded, I was in the Social Sciences Library for the entire six hour span from opening to closing. To start with, I read the relevant half of Shlaim Avi's War and Peace in the Middle East. While very readable, it underscored just how little I know about the region at the time. It would be quite impossible to develop a comprehensive knowledge of it by Tuesday. Actually, I have serious doubts about the wisdom of this academic approach. On the basis of no actual instruction, we are being called upon to synthesize weekly arguments on the basis of highly detailed, numerous, and academic accounts. While it's a game that I have some ability to play, I don't really think it is making me more knowledgeable or capable.
Despite my doubts, and bolstered by two sandwiches prepared from materials purchased at Sainsbury's, rather than purchased directly from there, I carried on reading. I finished half of Elizabeth Monroe's Britain's Moment in the Middle East: 1914-71. It too was fairly good to read, though it made many references to personages and no-longer-extant political entities that I know nothing about. As with Avi, I at least maintain the gist of the argument. Once I finish reading the relevant sections from David Fromkin's The Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East I should have enough raw material to build a decent fifteen minute presentation about.
During one of today's short intra-library breaks, I created a Google Group for the graduate freshers in the IR program. It will be publicly accessible, in case anyone is interested. I am hoping to use it to coordinate weekly meetings with the six other members of my heptet for the core seminar. Since none of us will be able to do all the readings, it would be enriching for all of us to have a short discussion before the actual seminar takes place. Doing so should also reduce some of the stress and wastefulness associated with having everyone prepare presentations independently.
An hour after the library closed, I met Margaret outside Nuffield. Through the light rain, we wandered to a coffee shop on St. Aldate's, which is open until midnight every day of the week. While I can't remember the extended form of its name, it abbreviates to G and D's. It is located quite near the music shop where Nora bought a guitar string and not far from Christ Church College, the Head of the River, and the Folly Bridge (each progressively farther south).
As before, talking with Margaret was relaxed and pleasant. I learned that we share the intention of eventually climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. As I recall, someone from my father's firm climbed it at some point during the past few years. It's something I would rather like to do during one of the stretches between terms, if only so that I could mildly amaze people who asked me what I did over the course of the vacation. After coffee, we wandered to Wadham and then back to Nuffield, where I left her in the company of her friend Anna.
Tomorrow morning, I am to visit the Wadham doctors on Beaumont Street for a meningitis and mumps vaccination. After that, I shall return to the scrutinizing of The Peace to End All Peace before meeting Emily at one. In case I haven't mentioned her already, Emily is part of the IR M.Phil group, Canadian, located at St. Antony's, and an alumna of Brown. I wonder if she knew Eva. She has kindly invited me, at some indefinite future point, to come to dinner at her college.
Other tasks for tomorrow include learning what NatWest would charge me if I simply wrote a cheque from the Bank of Montreal for the amount I want to transfer, rather than going through the bother of acquiring, signing, and mailing an Agreement for Verbal and Facsimile Transmissions to my home branch, then authorizing a wire transfer that will cost $50. In a related task, I need to go formally request an extension for paying my battles from the Domestic Bursar. They will have started charging me interest on the 14th. I also need to contact the department about why they haven't sent me a bill for my first term tuition and the BC student loans office about why they haven't sent me anything in months. It should be more-or-less obvious by now that the above list is mostly for my benefit, because it is very useful to have such things in places where you can find them quickly and they cannot be lost.
Looking through the glossy brochure for the Oxford Union, there is much that makes it tempting. They seem to have a fairly large lending library, which is always a valuable resource (especially when it is focused on history and politics). They regularly have excellent speakers: presidents of countries, Salman Rushdie, Terry Pratchett, and Jeffery Sacks this term alone. They have a couple of nice looking member's lounges, complete with the availability of £1 pints. Up until Thursday of next week, I could get a lifetime membership for £156 (C$340). After that, it becomes even more expensive. At a third of the cost, I would join readily. As it stands, I think that I shall not. $340 would go a fair way towards my eventual Kilimanjaro climb.
Kilimanjaro is 5,895m tall: 4.7 times as high as Grouse Mountain, which is what Alison, Jonathan, and I meant to climb a few days before I left. While the comparison is obviously quite deceptive, in terms of the respective difficulty of the climbs, it does offer the hope that it would not be an entirely impossible thing to actually pull off. Climbing Uhuru Peak on Kilimanjaro requires neither rock nor ice climbing skills, the major difficulty being the need to acclimatize to prevent altitude sickness. The climb can apparently be done in as little as four or five days. Wikipedia tells me that 15,000 people a year try to climb Kilimanjaro, though only 40% persist to the summit. Seeing how eminently feasible it would be to make an attempt in the next few years, my determination to do so increases considerably. It might be a good way to celebrate the completion of my M.Phil. Obviously, it would require quite a lot of fitness training beforehand.
I should, in any event, stop wandering through Kilimanjaro sites and return to the enormously less interesting task of reading for my core seminar.
Sunday, October 16
We matriculated today. I woke up early and bought a cap and bow tie, as well as a Sainsbury's sandwich and bagels for breakfast, before returning to Wadham to get dressed in 'sub fusc' for the first time. Sub fusc, for men, means a dark suit with black shoes, a white bow tie, an academic cap, and a robe appropriate to the level of the degree for which you are reading.
Once we were all suitably attired, we attended a short introduction in hall, followed by a tedious roll call. We then walked the short distance to the Sheldonian Theatre where a short exchange in Latin between a pair of officials was followed by a slightly longer speech in English. During the course of the event, we all officially became lifetime members of the University of Oxford, as we were already members of our respective colleges. Unlike in the past, when the university administered a matriculation test in Latin to ensure the colleges are not admitting dullards, they were willing to take us on faith about the colleges and departments respective abilities to select. We then spent a tedious hour or so being sorted by height, re-given the roll call, assembled, photographed, and dismissed in the main quad of Wadham. It's the only time so far I've seen people walking on the grass.
After matriculation, I went and got some vegetarian lunch with Nora at the Wheatsheaf before visiting the larger Sainsbury's near Bonn Square and returning to Wadham. The more distant Sainsbury's is enormously larger than the one at the intersection of Cornmarket and Broad Streets, beside the graveyard, where I have done all my shopping so far. The produce seemed to be marginally less fresh, but there was definitely a far greater selection to be had. They even had bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale (which my mother bought me for my goodbye party) for 50p less than the JCR bar. Aside from two of those, I bought cheese, bread, vegetable soups, apples, bananas, and a few other trinkets.
I really do have an exceptional amount of work to do, though I am feeling strangely incapable of coming to grips with it. Dealing with masses of reading is neither a talent of mine nor something that frequently appeals to me. My biggest advantage seems to lie in circumstances where very little time exists for comtemplation and deliberation. My advantage over more dilligent others diminishes as the time alloted to complete a task increases. Despite that tendency, as a graduate student I suppose I will need to come to terms with lengthy readings - particularly by sorting out the structural arrangements under which it will take place. The resumption of something along the lines of my round-the-dinner table tea and reading sessions with Meghan and Tristan would be welcome. I may also need to overcome my quibbles about the cost and buy a French press and some coffee.
In the evening, between stretches of reading, I spoke with my mother over Skype and sent her some photos from the matriculation ceremony. I was glad to hear that my family is doing well, though Sasha isn't attending school because of a labour dispute. Hopefully, it will end soon.
Tomorrow, I am hoping to spend the better part of six hours reading in the Social Science Library on Manor Road. I have a great deal of preparation to do for my core seminar and for the paper that Dr. Hurrell eventually wants on the same topic. It has been difficult, so far, to motivate myself for course-oriented readings. As I told Nora, my brain is a bit like a large industrial wood chipper. It can process a lot of information quickly, under the right circumstances, but it draws a lot of power and can be quite dangerous for the operator if used carelessly or when in a poor state of repair. Getting all those spinning blades running smoothly together, without losing too many limbs and pints of blood, basically defines my big personal project for the next short while.
I don't know whether it's the product of dissolved minerals in the water here or reflective of the chemical make-up of British tea, but it seems to be enormously more staining than the North American sort. My caffeine mug needs to be vigorously scrubbed with soap after each usage to remove one or more brown rings left deposited inside it by the Earl Grey it contained. It's not something I ever experienced with any brand of tea in Canada.
I am still getting used to the distinctive taste of the water here, though it no longer jumps out at me quite as much as it did when I first arrived. As I've learned from almost all my travels, people in Vancouver should take delight in the quality of their tap water. While I am sure this water is entirely safe, and probably even charming in some English kind of way, it doesn't have the character of newly melted snow, shipped from a resevoir located a forty minute walk of your house.
Several times in the past, I've referred to Library Court as a panopticon: a kind of prison invented by Jeremy Bentham in which all prisoners can see into one another's cells and where they are at least potentially observed by a central watchman. While important to Bentham's idea, there is no watchman here. Still, the idea of constant exposure to one another is quite useful for understanding how I feel about living here. The inescapable low-level mutual awareness is particularly true in an auditory fashion. While you can't generally hear what is being said, you can always here when a conversation is going on and almost always determine who between. Sometimes, this can be uncomfortable for me. Living in Totem and in Fairview (except in my last year there), my neighbours were almost always hostile to me. That produces a kind of uncomfortable siege mentality, but also a reasonable sense of isolation and privacy. You may be stuck behind a wall, but at least you're the only one on this side. Library Court offers less opportunity for isolation which is, in the end, a thing that I frequently need. I shall need to find other places in Oxford where it is feasible to be alone and, crucially, also possible to get work done.
Today's short segments:- There is a new version of iTunes out, but after updating once only to find that the new version had crippled music sharing (only letting five people connect before it disables itself until you restart), I am wary of upgrading. It brings out the same nervousness as paying any amount for songs that there is no guarantee whatsoever will still play later on, as using any of the legitimate online music services requires.
- Here is another description of Oxford today.
Saturday, October 15
It's startling to think that the first term is now one eighth done, though I am told there is plenty of work to be done during the six week 'breaks' between terms.
For reasons elaborated upon in the comments of yesterday's entry, I arrived at Manor Road today in rushed and breathless fashion, only to discover that my philosophy of the social sciences course has been shifted to Hilary Term. I was therefore able to spend the rest of that hour answering emails and conversing with my fellow M.Phil students. Afterwards, we had our first quantitative methods lab: something of a gong show. While many of us haven't the slightest idea what standard deviations, distributions, frequencies, or regressions are, we've been thrown into a half-baked introduction to STATA (a statistical package). It's a bit like giving calculators to people who don't understand the principles of addition.
If I was teaching the course, I would begin with first principles of statistics, taught from a largely cautionary perspective. The word 'bias' hasn't arisen a single time in the course so far, though the concept is absolutely essential. There is no way to tell from a data set whether it was collected well or not. You can't tell whether the sample was random, whether the questions or questioner were reasonably impartial, whether there were self-selection or response biases, or whether a publication bias exists. Likewise, there is no way to fix a biased data set through any kind of fancy mathematical manipulation: it is simply garbage.
For most of the people in the M.Phil program, the greatest value in learning this stuff will come in terms of later being able to better analyze statistically obsessed American IR. (Because statistics are so empirical, rigorous, and scientific, you see.) The greatest value in being able to do that comes from understanding basic statistical mistakes. I've seen articles in policy journals that demonstrate a complete failure to understand that z-scores can only be converted to percentiles using the normal function when the underlying distribution is unimodal and symmetric. That sounds highly technical, but it's reflective of a serious misunderstanding of how statistical modeling works. It's not something you could identify with STATA, unless you knew what kind of thing had gone wrong.
After that stats lab, I walked with Emily and another of the M.Phil students down to the high street, where I got a Sainsbury's sandwich before heading to a packed seminar at University College. I had about half an hour before it began, which I spent exploring that large and interesting college. Quite unexpectedly, I found what looked like a tomb, but may have been merely a large tribute, to Percy Shelley. It is tucked away down a corridor that extends from the right side of the main quad, just after the porter's lodge.
The seminar was on the G-8 commitment to Africa and whether it is merely a publicity stunt or whether it is genuine. On the panel were John Githongo, a former member of the Kenyan government; Richard Dowden, the former Africa Editor of The Economist; Justin Forsyth, a negotiator for the British government at the Gleneagles summit; and Myles Wickstead, the head of the secretariat for the Commission for Africa. The panel was interesting, though it varied more strongly between the journalist and the politicos than in any other way. Mr. Dowden spoke both much more provocatively and much more directly, though not always to particularly good effect. There was agreement among all the panelists that the idea of 'saving Africa' is problematic and that the necessary reforms need to come from within, with the benefit of outside assistance and the discontinuation of policies that perpetuate current inequities. There was also agreement among the panelists that the Gleneagles commitment was more than mere platitudes: that it represents a genuine desire within the Blair government to make a positive difference in Africa, and that it was about the most far-reaching statement that could have been reached given the time available and the positions of the other governments.
Much was said about corruption, aid, debt relief, and disease. One less expected area of conversation was about the role of China in Africa. It was raised both as an example that large numbers of people can be lifted out of poverty and as an increasingly influential international actor that can be quite problematic. Richard Dowden mentioned specifically how attempts by developed governments to induce compliance with the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (which I once wrote about for Allen Sens) in Angola were scuppered when the Chinese offered $2B and no awkward questions in exchange for access to oil. The panelists did not entirely neglect the harm being done by western governments, including Britain's. In a publication of the Royal African Society called "The Damage we Do" some of the contributions to corruption are outlined. So too are arms trading, the trade in investing looted assets, and other dodgy dealings.
Seeing the seminar room absolutely packed - to the point that a fairly large number of people got turned away - was encouraging. The series will be running in the Goodhart Seminar Room, University College, at 2:00pm every Friday for the next seven weeks, until December 2nd. My only regret about the event was that Margaret didn't show up, in the end. I had been hoping to show her the Shelley monument I found, afterwards.
Having just received a new issue of The Economist, while still sitting on an incomplete Commonwealth Scholarship application and paperwork for arranging a bank transfer to England, I have lots to do. Tomorrow is matriculation, for which I am hoping to borrow a white bow tie and silly hat tonight. Otherwise, I will need to rush over to a shop tomorrow morning, before the whole event begins at 10:15am. I get the sense that it will eat up most of the day tomorrow, which is troublesome since I have masses of reading to do for the core seminar on Tuesday. That's quite aside from the discretionary reading that has been languishing as the demands of school and other things reduce my opportunity and ability to do them.
Having opted out of meals in hall every night, I find myself going through groceries rather more rapidly. Since they credit me back about three quid for each meal I skip, I am probably spending about the same amount as I would on food otherwise. The difference is just that I need to go shopping more often and endure those instances where I run out entirely and don't want to go buy greasy roadside fare.
PS. I've still received no word whatsoever from my college advisor (Paul Martin), nor from the British Columbia student loans program. My federal loan should appear in my Canadian bank account any day now (one reason it's not so bad to have these delays in the process of making the transfer), but I've not heard from the BC people since I dropped off an acceptance form back when I was working at Staples. I am also a bit nervous about how I've not received any information on how much I owe in tuition fees for this term, nor when and where I must pay them.
PPS. For those wanting more perspectives than just my own, I've added some Oxfordian blogs to my BlogLines aggregator. Some of them look pretty snazzy.; they make this page look positively sparse. Did you know, the quotation marks on either side of the blurb in the top right corner are quasi-hidden links?
PPPS. Sorry about the excessive number of postscripts in these posts. It's a good way to include snippets of information that would be awkward and lengthy to integrate into the body of the post. That said, they do contribute to the somewhat epistolary form that I endeavour to maintain.
P^4S. I wish I had my bicycle.
Friday, October 14
Happy Birthday Meaghan Beattie
As of tonight, I am making an official attempt to move my sleep schedule back to the ideal version I established at UBC: going to sleep at one and waking up at nine. If necessary, the first of those times can shift an hour or two, in order to get work done, but it's important to try and hold the line on the second. Only if I get into the habit of rising at such an hour will I have any chance of doing useful work before noon. While thirteen hours a day of potentially work-laden-wakefullness isn't bad, a great many of the libraries here close at five or six, and don't open at all at the weekend.
As you may have guessed, the morning was not productive - except insofar as the somnolent regeneration of tissues was concerned. Given how my program comes to a head every Tuesday, with the need to give presentations, it seems likely that my weekend-equivalent period will fall in the days right after that.
This afternoon, we had our first lecture on 'the advanced study of politics and international relations.' Each week, the lecturer and topic will vary. This time, it was Dr. Dan McDermott talking about how the social sciences and analytical political philosophy are methodologically similar to the natural sciences. Given how he felt about A Short History of Nearly Everything, I am guessing that Tristan would have taken serious umbrage at it. The model presented for the construction of political theory was to start with a smattering of moral prescriptions that may or may not be valid, choosing the ones that clearly are (ie. don't eat your neighbours), and then creating a theory that captures as many of the 'oughts' as can be managed.
Described as I just did, it's a particularly unconvincing framework. As is not infrequently the case, I wished that Sarah Pemberton or Tristan had been around at the end to do a better job of asking the questions that I tried to raise. Notably, the treatment of the 'oughts' at the beginning of the theory as given is problematic. Surely, they come to our attention for some reason. Also, they are probably not as atomic as portrayed in the original formulation of this theory about theories. Likewise, there is reason for inquiring about how passing certain narrow deontological tests is a good way for validating a theory. Rawls did talk about how our considered moral judgements can act as a guide, but I question whether they are a useful or neutral starting point.
After the lecture, I walked to Jericho with James Fribley: an M.Phil student in politics who I met during the class. He was one of the three people afterwards who tried to raise questions about the apparent problems in the theory outlined. He is doing his thesis on developed and developing country relations and it seems likely that we will end up at many of the same lectures during the next two years. From Illinois, he did his undergraduate work at Princeton. He is now at St. Hugh's college, which is off to the north, past Keble College somewhere.
Tonight, I read, responded to emails, and did laundry. I picked up States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China by Theda Skocpol, as recommended by my Uncle Robert, in Vermont. Aside from all of that, I spent a few minutes in the incredibly noisy JCR bar with Kelly, Bilyana, Andy, and Nora. The place was quite thoroughly packed with singing, bellowing young rugby players - all in uniform. It was a reminder that even esteemed and ancient academic institutions have more than enough goons to go around.
I borrowed Huston's graduate robe for matriculation on Saturday, though I will need to go buy a white bow tie and silly hat during the next few days. Since I won't have to wear 'sub fusc' again until exams at the end of the year, it seems less than intelligent to spend £40 on a robe of my own: £40 that could buy a plane ticket to Tallinn, two weeks worth of food, or some books.
PS. Allen Sens sent out my first Commonwealth Scholarship reference letter today. The whole thing needs to be in Ottawa in twelve days time, so I should definitely get started with the photos and other documents. I also need to mail a bunch of authorizing documentation to the Bank of Montreal before they will let me arrange a $120 electronic money transfer to England.
Thursday, October 13
Happy Birthday Sasha Wiley
This morning, I read and rested. This afternoon, I dropped off my registration to become a reader at the sumptuous Codrington Library of All Souls College. Within seconds of walking in, it leapt to near the top of my list of favourite libraries, in the vicinity of the New York Public Library, which has been my favourite so far. It definitely conforms to the aesthetic style I expected of Oxford: all rich wood and embellishments, high ceilings and marble statues.
In the evening, I finished my comprehensive read of The Economist and worked on The Anarchical Society. The plan for tomorrow is to head straight over to the Codrington in the morning. Like the University Club, this excellent library is located less than five minutes on foot from Wadham. Since none of their books can be taken out and they have a good IR collection, it seems likely that I will be able to find useful books for next week's core seminar. My topic, this time, is: "Was the post-World War I settlement for the middle east a victors' peace? Why did it prove unstable?" There are six books which we have been advised to read, if at all possible. I shall do what I can.
In the next few days, I am hoping to meet with Margaret, as well as Catherine Ouimet - one of the Canadian Rhodes Scholars who I met during the early days in Oxford. Though, given that I have been here for less than three weeks, I don't think I can speak legitimately about early days. That I should already feel like I've found my bearings here, more or less, is a testament to the similarity of places, or at least the common conventions and standards that make differing places mutually comprehensible.
Today's photo was taken in contravention of the 'no photography' rule at the Codrington, though I took it before I was made aware of that restriction. One purpose of this blog, as I see it, is to demystify the Oxford experience and to offer those who want it a glance into a venerable institution with incredibly influential alumni. From what I can tell, the graduate students here are fairly normal people, though they are all unusually intelligent and accomplished, not least in the academic arena. Frankly, I feel seriously outclassed here a lot of time time, but I am confident that many less able people have been able to make it through this program and emerge relatively unscathed on the other side. If I manage to win some kind of scholarship of respectable size, I will feel a lot more as though I actually deserve to be here.
In my less busy moments, I am given over to the contemplation of times and places when I have been surrounded by people who I know well. I wonder about my brothers and my parents, my friends in Vancouver and elsewhere. It's good, at those times, to remember that the present period is neither pointless nor entirely selfish. Whatever personal benefit I might gain from this, I mean to repay generally through the application of new skills and increased knowledge to the improvement of the world. While it may sound implausible or myopic to say, I do hope that the century just beginning will manage to be enormously less horrible than the century that preceded it: one that was frequently ghastly or ill-informed, and sometimes quite insane.
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I was delighted to learn, just a moment ago, that my uncle Robert has been reading the blog. He and my Aunt Mirka, my mother's sister, live in Vermont. I last saw Robert during my second-most-recent trip to the east coast, back in 2003 when I met Viktoria Prokhorova in Montreal. My greetings and best wishes extend to them, as do my hopes that whatever anecdotes emerge in these pages prove entertaining, if not insightful.
PS. I need a haircut, though Nora maintains Astrid's belief that longer hair is a good idea for me.
PPS. Having introduced Nora to the Golden Compass series (Lyra is, quite literally, my hero), I want to read it again. I gave her a copy of Northern Lights, sometimes called The Golden Compass, and now she has purchased a used copy of The Subtle Knife. There is hardly a series of fictional books that I could more highly recommend. One day, I hope that I shall have a daughter to read them to.
Wednesday, October 12
My core seminar this morning was quite intense. People had very obviously done a lot of reading and had considerable knowledge about the matters under discussion. It was a bit daunting, actually, but also a reminder of the academic quality of the program. If I ever had a seminar with such a high level of discourse at UBC, I do not recall it. By contrast, our first quantitative methods lecture was absolutely elementary - going on for two hours about the definition of 'mean' and 'median.' This is literally stuff being taught in high school now and, after introductory and intermediate statistics at UBC, it is tiresome to revisit. Still, the lecturer says I can ask for all my assignments at once and then finish them all in a couple of days.
Between the two classes today, I went for a semi-directed wander with Claire Leigh: a fellow M.Phil student in IR. She's a British national, a Cambridge graduate, and a member of St. Cross College. Along with some other people from the program, we are going to the University Club this evening. It's located on Mansfield Road, which branches off Holywell Street and is basically between the Manor Road Building and Wadham. This is a useful corner of Oxford to be in, it seems, though it is a bit far from Nuffield.
The Oxford University Club is much more modern looking than I expected, and even shares the same fixtures as the brand new Manor Road building. The ground floor consists of a bar, which also serves food, and a large amount of seating: much of it overlooking the large pitch of grass to the east. Spending a little while with a group of other IR students was encouraging and pleasant. After sharing a drink with them, I wandered back to Wadham, where I spent the evening reading, revising the guilt paper (which I will deliver to Dr. Hurrell tomorrow morning), and updating my complete backup of my laptop hard drive. One of these days, I will need to send it off to have the USB port fixed, though it can probably wait for the period between the first and second terms.
Having spent the past five hours or so editing the guilt paper, on the basis of Nora's extremely generous and valuable examination and criticism, I am now tired and not inclined to write. Despite that, I want to express my appreciation for her help. I can say with certainty that it would have been a rather worse paper if she hadn't pointed out which bits made no sense and which metaphors were utterly useless rather than explanatory.
PS. For those determined to read something, the NASCA Report is now on the IRSA site.
PPS. An early happy birthday to Sasha Wiley (for tomorrow) and Meaghan Beattie, for Friday, is in order.
Tuesday, October 11
I spent my winnings on a mass of rather healthy food at Sainsbury's this afternoon: carrots, apples, peppers, orange juice, bagels, cheese, etc. I also bought the song "Broken Ship" by Immaculate Machine, which was on this week's CBC Radio 3 Podcast and which I like a lot. Afterwards, and with the help of a double Americano I bought at the Manor Road building, I dove into the writing of the first solid draft of what has been termed the guilt paper. Helpfully, I have a window for revising it after the seminar tomorrow. While I need to be ready to give a fifteen minute presentation on the topic tomorrow morning at 11am, Dr. Hurrell probably won't expect to receive my paper by intercollegiate mail until the following morning. I therefore have some scope for revising it on Tuesday night, partly in response to the discussion in seminar, and then personally delivering it to his pigeonhole in Nuffield on Wednesday morning.
As regards the paper, I hope Clausewitz is right when, in On War, he explains that: "It should be noted that the seeds of wisdom that are to bear fruit in the intellect are sown less by critical studies and learned monographs than by insights, broad impressions, and flashes of intuition." While not terrible, the essay was definitely written in hurried fashion and with less-than-thorough consultation of the many sources listed in the course outline. As Dennis Danielson would have said, this essay needs time to cook.
Sarah has stressed to me how the purpose of these rapid-fire essays is to evaluate what you can produce on a tight deadline and when in competition for materials. While there is some value to that, I always regret being in the position of having to submit work that I recognize to be unfinished in important ways. Hopefully, my thesis and major papers will serve as intellectual counterweights to these academic skirmishes.
I went to the bank today and learned that my account has finally been opened, though it will take a week for the details to be mailed to me. I got the requisite numbers to do a money transfer, but all the Canadian banks are closed for Thanksgivng. Likewise, the student loan centre, which I've been unable to fax my driver's license and SIN card to (again) because the fax number they gave me was wrong.
Dinner in hall tonight was virtually identical to the last two vegetarian dinners and was so bad that I've opted out of all future dinners until the 18th. The cost of the meals will be credited to my battels. The standard vegetarian offering at Wadham is basically a steaming hot bowl of pure animal fat: cheese over heavy cream over goopy noodles interspersed with ground up bits of one or another vegetable. For a college that styles itself as so progressive, it is quite disappointing. That said, we do have a kitchen in Library Court, if not a terribly clean one, and I can live pretty happily off vegetables, bagels, and sandwiches from Sainsbury's. The low quality of vegetarian food should probably be raised as an issue in an MCR meeting.
Monday, October 10
An afternoon game
This afternoon, from 12:30 to 1:30, I participated in an economic experiment which consisted of a game. Within the game, there were three groups of five. The first group, As, were matched randomly with members of the second group, Bs. Each of these players started with 35 tokens, each worth 1/5th of a Pound. There was a third group, Cs, who got 25 tokens.
The game was only played once (ie. not iterated).
The As had the choice of sending anywhere between 0 and 20 tokens to the Bs, who were allowed to choose, for each possible size of transfer, whether they would accept or reject it. If the B accepted, the A got 50-X tokens, where X was the size of the transfer. (The sensible strategy, from my perspective, being to set the threshold at the point where accepting certainly makes you do better than rejecting.) The B, in this case, would get 30+X. If the B rejected, the B would keep 35 tokens and the A would lose one. For each A-B pair where a transfer took place, all Cs lost one token. Cs did not make any choices over the course of the game.
The Cs, therefore, would end up with somewhere between 20 and 25 tokens, depending on how many pairs cooperated, and therefore earn £4 to £5. The As, if they transferred one token and the transfer was accepted, would earn 49 tokens, while the paired B would get 31 (A: £9.80, B: £6.20). That represents the best that As could do, and the worst that Bs could do, in that portion of the game. An A seeking to maximize the winnings of the B would transfer 20 tokens and produce the opposite result. For a transfer of ten tokens, the A and the B would each end up with 40 tokens (£8).
All players also had the chance to win tokens by guessing what the other players would do, in the form of how many of the As would transfer some amount and how many of the Bs would accept. Getting one right earned you 50p and getting both right earned you £1. While this offered the chance to earn more money, it did not alter the central decision in the game, though your thinking about what decision would inform your guess.
My thinking was that, firstly, every A would make a transfer because the worst they could do is lose four tokens and they could gain as many as 19. Additionally, each B would accept a transfer, for precisely the same reason. Moreover, it would be awfully boring to sit in a room for an hour listening to rules and then not actually play the game in an active way.
I was an A, one of the two actively deciding groups. I decided to transfer 7 tokens, one above the minimum amount where the payoff to the B of accepting exceeded the amount that would be had from rejecting. For a B, accepting 7 tokens means earning £7.40, while rejecting it would mean getting £7. That said, for the B to accept costs all five Cs one token each, for a total loss among the Cs of £1. For the A, transferring seven tokens means getting £8.60 if the transfer is accepted and £6.80 if it is rejected (which would be against the interest of the B, provided they don’t care about the Cs).
In the end, I won £7.30, which means that my offer was rejected but that I guessed properly that the four other As would all make an offer. In addition to the £7.30, I got £3 just for playing.
The outcome of my section of the game, therefore, left me with £6.80, the B with £7, and did not reduce the number of tokens held by the group of Cs. Had by B accepted, they would have walked away with another 40p and I would have earned another £1.60. Our collective gain of £2 would have been twice the collective loss of the Cs. I suppose either concern for the Cs or the fact that I would earn more from the transaction caused them to reject my strategy of the minimum offer for clear mutual gain.
Sunday, October 9
In the past nineteen days, I have consumed fewer than five cups of coffee. Contrast that, for a moment, with life in Vancouver. During the fiscal year from April 1st until my departure on September 21st, I spent $204.88 at Starbucks alone: nearly 26% of my spending on all foodstuffs. During that period, I consumed 37 Venti dark roast beverages (approx. 275mg of caffeine each) and 24 quadruple iced espressos (approx. 140mg of caffeine). While the caffeine figures on that site may be way off (Starbucks doesn't seem to publish their own), it is nonetheless illustrative. During the complete fiscal year of 2004, I spent $284.94 at Starbucks: 11% of the total spending on food. That includes six pounds of Sulawesi roast, 10 quadruple espressos, and 42 Venti dark roasts. Margaret and I have resolved to try to find a reasonably high quality, reasonably low cost coffee shop somewhere in Oxford.
Visiting Staples today was quite shocking. There are no floor staff at all, only surly, disinterested cashiers who will happily charge you four times what binders and notebooks cost in Canada but will not even point you in the direction of four-hole punches. Even with the mean British income, people here are getting seriously overcharged for software and electronics. I wonder if this derives from a lack of competition, from people simply expecting to pay so much, or from some other factor. While paper and binders can't be easily brought over from North America, due to differing standards, I shall endeavour to secure everything else possible from back home. On the positive side, I now have a neat row of binders with all the papers that were previously strewn around my room secured inside.
My plan to get cheap Sainsbury's sandwiches for dinner was scuppered by them closing hours before I expected. Them and most everyone else. I therefore spent an hour and a half wandering central Oxford in search of somewhere other than a sit-down restaurant that had something edible and vegetarian. I wandered around Gloucester Green (which isn't) and then past Nuffield to the area near the train station. In the end, I paid rather too much for cheese pizza and a Coke. I need to remember that Sunday evening is not the time to find yourself without cheese and bagels at home.
With the relevant libraries closed and a brain no longer particularly up to the task of scouring e-journals, I think I will spend the rest of tonight reading Hedley Bull's The Anarchical Society. It's not particularly relevant to my paper, but my supervisor did work with Bull, it's considered a pretty central text in the discipline, and it's the most interesting thing I have at hand. From the little I know about Bull's work, I think his conception of nation states existing in a society, despite the strictly anarchical character of world politics, is a highly useful one. It's an important work of the so-called British school of international relations, which I've made a conscious and costly choice to study within.
My thinking with regards to the guilt essay has developed to the point that I have a strategy for tackling it. That strategy has been refined through discussion with Sarah. Describing the difficulties involved, I will develop or expound some kind of meaningful criterion for war guilt on the part of states. I would prefer to define it in a way that doesn't hinge upon the intentions of individual decision makers, given how hard they are to evaluate. While I find it a strong contendor, the international legal definition seems to hinge primarily upon the matter of aggression, which can, itself, be a tricky thing to define. I will then evaluate in a less-than-exhaustive way whether Germany and Austria-Hungary met whatever criterion I posit, stressing again that it will be just one possibility among many. Finally, I will describe how it was the fact that they lost the war that led to any kind of guilt criterion being applied to those two states. Satisfying some war guilt standard is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause a state to be treated as guilty. Losing the war seems to be necessary, and may be sufficient. Trachtenberg's comment, at the end of his chapter on WWI, that our historical judgments on the origin of the conflict are reflective of the political exigencies of the moment is helpful, in this regard.
There are counters to that kind of claim. For instance, Iraq certainly won the initial war against Kuwait when the Iraqi leadership chose to invade it, yet it was widely seem as the guilty party in the instigation of the war. Is the subsequent American-led expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait a necessary part of that determination? Had the Soviet Union won the war in Afghanistan, would it not be seen as aggression on their part?
There are thus two separate disputes involved in the paper: one about the reality of what took place historically (who said what when, etc) and one about the moral framework through which we choose to evaluate it. Personally, I find the second question to be much more interesting since it at least attempts to generate a test to which all cases can be subjected. Those who see history as predominantly useful as a guide to future behaviour would agree.
The writing of this essay really makes me wish I had some of the materials that I left in Vancouver. In particular, the texts, readings, and notes from my international law course with ITG and the international law seminar with Byers would be helpful. In addition, the numerous texts that formed the basis for my twentieth century history class with Gossen would be valuable. I am sure all of the books in question could be had in one library or another, but having texts which are already familiar (and have the vital passages identified and marked) would be a good head start.
Luckily, Natasha - one of my fellow residents in Wadham - lent me Christine Gray's book International Law and the use of Force and Thomas Franck's excellent book Recourse to Force: State Action Against Threats and Armed Attacks. They are both books that I read last year and which I know hold useful information on the question of legitimate and illegitimate war. International law is difficult but fascinating; I wish I knew a lot more about it. Towards the aim of the essay, the Bull book is also less peripheral than I expected. I should like to finish the first 200 pages or so tonight, though it will remain to be seen if I can manage it.
rebus sic stantibus: Things standing thus; provided that conditions have not changed; spec. in International Law the principle that a treaty lapses when conditions are substantially different from those which obtained when it was concluded. Contrast with pacta sunt servanda.
PS. Do people find daily postings worthwhile? I use them partly as a mechanism for ordering and distilling my own thoughts, and I recognize that people may find that appallingly tedious. Writing things down like, say, the definitions of tricky words, is the only way I can overcome the limitations of my memory.
PPS. In consideration of Sarah's suggestion that we go to Tallinn in December, I've been looking at ticket prices from EasyJet. It seems that if we fly from London and book early, we could get round trip tickets for under £100.
Saturday, October 8
My Saturday nights from here on in (see photo)
I finished my preliminary read of the October 8-14 Economist this morning, before moving on to continued work on my paper for Tuesday. Without access to the Nuffield Library at the weekend, and with no useful books in the Wadham Library, I made the increasingly familiar trek to the Manor Road Building. I am trying hard to get the hang of this whole 'graduate student' role. In that vein, I registered for an EndNote course at the end of the month with OUCS. That's not to say that nothing social has been happening. Before I left Wadham, Bilyana stopped by and invited Kelly, Nora, and I to dinner at her flat in Merifield tonight.
Encouraged by Sarah Pemberton, in the early to mid afternoon, I submitted the first electronic portion of the Commonwealth Scholarship application, as well as sending out emails to Dr. Hurrell and two UBC professors asking them to serve as referees. Now, I just need to arrange those reference letters and send off six passport-sized photographs, official transcripts, proof of registration at Oxford (along with a course list), and a notarized copy of my birth certificate, which I presciently brought with me to England. Apprently, the preselection results will be available in mid-December.
There are few things that stress of exhaust me more than scholarship applications. Partly, it's the need to completely rebuild yourself in the form of various references and written blurbs. Partly, it's the complexity of deadlines and paperwork. Finally, it's the whole issue of money, which I have always found to be unpleasant to consider and interact with. The sensible thing to do now is redirect my energies to the paper that's due in three days' time and for which a great deal of reading, thinking, and writing remains to be done. To some extent, the deluge outside should help with that. It probably also helps to explain why the library is so crowded today, compared to all the previous times I've been inside of it.
The walk from Wadham to Merifield for dinner gave me my first chance to use the waterproof hat my parents sent for Thanksgiving 'in the field.' It served the purpose quite well and I arrived at Bilyana's dry-headed. In retrospect, I am very glad to have gone. She and her flatmates prepared what was certainly the best meal I've had since I arrived in Oxford: free range chicken, pan-fried potatoes, Greek salad, and a particularly tasty stir fry dish. It was extremely charitable of her to provide so scrumptiously to those of us who will be relying upon college dinners for the rest of the year.
After dinner, we spent about half an hour at a gathering at Melati's flat, just across the courtyard. Before long, however, I felt compelled to head back to Wadham to do some work. I am genuinely quite nervous about this paper. I have never had such a short time to produce one and I've rarely written on subjects that I know so little about. In addition to all of that, I feel pressure to impress my supervisor. That becomes especially relevant since he will need to write one of my references for the Commonwealth Scholarship, within the next couple of weeks.
Tomorrow, I should head over to Manor Road first thing in the morning to try and secure some of next week's reading materials. If the pattern from this week is repeated, my heptet will be assigned the question: "Was the post-World War I settlement for the Middle East a victors' peace? Why did it prove unstable?" The syllabus lists nineteen books on the subject.
PS. Some deadlines for myself:- Commonwealth: October 25th
- Mackenzie King: February 1st
- Clarendon: No longer open to me
- ORS: Ask supervisor about
- SSHRC: Seems to be open only to those studying in Canada
- Chevening: 15 January
PPS. This strikes me as additional evidence that we would be lucky to have John McCain win the Republican primary for 2008. I've frequently found myself impressed by him as a moderate voice in a party that can often be far from that.
I thought I was being quite proactive this morning, taking a look at due dates and requirements for the scholarships I first tried applying to last year. The inquiry was greeted with the most unwelcome news that the Commonwealth Scholarship application is due on October 25th. Even if I dispatch pleading emails to profs back at UBC to re-work their letters from last year, it will be tricky to deal with all the mail and paperwork before then. Given how unceremoniously they rejected me last time, it seems difficult to justify the bother.
Today was actually exceptionally productive. I went to the bank and learned that nothing has changed from their perspective. The account will open... when it opens. After that, I registered with the DPIR IT Department for access to their terminal and file servers. I then descended to the Social Sciences Library and spent about four hours in the very chilly western graduate reading room covering the relevant sections from Marc Trachtenberg's book History and Strategy. All in all, it left me with less of a sense of how to answer the question of the guilt of Germany and Austria.
The essay comes down, firstly, to two definitions: those of 'guilt' and those of 'Germany' and 'Austria-Hungary.' The second definition is easier, so I will tackle it first. Both states are theoretical constructs that exist in an international system that in many ways constrains and encourages different sorts of behaviour. Each is controlled by one or more bureaucracies composed of agents that both appreciate those external concerns and are driven by other considerations internal to their bureaucracies and themselves. For my purposes, I shall examine 'Germany' in the sense of the central cadre of German political and military leaders - the people who made the decisions that led immediately to war. Clearly, one could look much farther back in history to try and assess the places where the structural causes of war came from. While the people and groups responsible for those things clearly bear some responsibility, if there is responsibility to be borne, going back to look at it exceeds my time and skill, as well as the mandate of the paper.
Moving on, then, to the question of responsibility. What is it that makes a governing elite responsible for starting a war? Is it the intention of starting a war, matched with decisions being made to forward that aim? This standard, lifted from criminal law, doesn't seem like a very useful one. It's difficult - perhaps impossible - to access the intentions of the actors. Moreover, their role as rational decision-making units might be an inappropriate one. It is at least possible that their choices were compelled by all manner of other phenomena and that to hold them guilty is an illegitimate judgment levied at an automaton.
Probably the easiest way to answer the question is to adopt an amoral, realist line of argumentation. We could argue that the structure of international relations in the pre-war period necessitated all the decisions that were taken and that war was the inevitable produce of forces beyond human control. Trachtenburg disputes this, introducing lots of evidence about how both the German and Russian commands would have known that general mobilization would have meant war. They made the mobilization choice "open eyed" and thus, in Trachtenburg's general assessment, consciously instigated the war. Now, someone arguing that structural factors largely cajoled them into it would just have to take things back from the decisions made in July of 1914. By then, it could be argued, all of the makings were already in place.
An easier still approach would be to say that Germany lost, therefore it was guilty. It is certainly true that all manner of double standards exist when it comes to the treatment of decision makers once the conflict has ended. To quote Robert McNamara:LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
While the issue of conduct within war can be usefully distinguished from a moral assessment of the reasons for which war was initiated, the danger that 'responsibility' is just what the winners are able to assign to the losers is a real one.
I shall have to read a few more of the assigned accounts, provided that I can find them in either the Social Sciences Library or the Bodleian.
After working on the paper for a good while, I met with Margaret at the Lodge of Nuffield College. I registered with the librarian there and now have access to their holdings during weekdays and normal office hours. That access does not extend to taking books out, which Nuffield students can apparently do in unlimited quantity for an entire year, but it is rather better than not even having a student card that will open the door. I should now seek to gain similar (or better) privileges at St. Antony's: the other big IR college.
Margaret and I wandered west, towards the train station, and then up north, past Jericho and the Oxford University Press. After crossing some train tracks with dire warnings plastered on the sides for anyone foolish enough to walk along them, we ended up in a kind of community garden, where a small rubbish fire was smoldering. Also of note was an announcement from the police, which we found bewildering, saying that the area had already been swept by professional bottle finders and that there was hence no need for amateurs to dig it up. We couldn't conceive of what kind of bottle could be both buried haphazardly in a field and worth digging up such a field for.
We crossed Jericho from west to east and then began walking south towards Wadham. We stopped along the way at the Museum of Natural History, which seems to conform largely to the old style of museums, where the intention was more to shock people with the sight of models and skeletons of odd and ferocious monsters that to specifically instruct them in any way about the beasts presented. That said, it is definitely an impressive site and very well worth a look.
Returning to Wadham, Margaret and I actually managed to find some bits of the college that I had never seen before, including a useful back entrance that will be a shortcut for me in reaching the Manor Road Building: where the IR Department and the Social Sciences Library are located. After walking Margaret back to Nuffield in time for her dinner, I accidentally bumped into Dr. Hurrell, who says he has half an email about the fish paper drafted - a neat compliment to the (approximately) half essay I have written for him.
Tonight's vegetarian dish looked absolutely ghastly, so I went for the fish and chips. Cod (or Orange Roughy) aren't factory-farmed, at least. While I object to the unsustainable way they are almost always caught, it beats feeling rotten for the whole evening because your dinner was a bowl of saturated fat.
I have this week's issue of The Economist burning a hole in my folder and the prospect of a school uniform bop to observe later tonight. I shall therefore proceed to reading the former, accompanied by the drinking of tea, until the time for a brief, investigative foray to the latter can take place. I've also managed to activate my account for the DPIR terminal server. It's very odd to have an 800x600 window of Windows XP open inside Mac OS X. Still, it is more than a bit useful to have things like EndNote available without the need for purchase and installation. Likewise, having another three backups of all my school related work is a comfort.
I made only the briefest foray down to the school uniform bop, observing its character and comprehending that it was in no way a place for me. I took a quick batch of purely documentary photographs, perpetuating my role as the chronicler of all things Library Court related, before retreating back to my issue of The Economist and stocks of Earl Grey.
PS. Note to self, remember to look up application deadlines for:- MacKenzie King
- Clarendon
- ORS
- SSHRC
- Rhodes
Also, email former referees to request that they prepare new letters for said applications.
Thursday, October 6
A modest day
In many ways, this was the slowest day so far in Oxford. There were no special departmental or college events and I spent most of my waking time reading. Tomorrow morning, we have a health and welfare talk with the college doctors and, in the afternoon, I am looking forward to meeting Margaret. Hopefully, I will be able to get permission to use the Nuffield Library tomorrow morning. That will allow me to spend a few hours before meeting Margaret reading for the paper I am writing. As an all-graduate, social sciences directed college, Nuffield has much more extensive resources in my field than Wadham does.
In my mailbox this morning, I got the bill for my 'battles.' That is to say, all college expenses for the term. Between board and lodging, bed linen, and various levies it comes to £927.88 (C$1922) for the Michaelmas term, ending on December 3rd. I am required to pay it, along with tuition, by the 14th, but given the difficulties so far with opening a bank account, I risk missing that deadline.
I called the National Student Loan Centre, which apparently had an urgent message for me, but actually just wants me to fax them yet another copy of my driver's license and birth certificate. I can't conceive of why they could possibly need those now, so late in the application process, but I suppose I shall have to find somewhere either inside or outside the college from which I can send a fax. I can't use my own telephone and computer because my line only connects to others within Oxford. Likewise, I cannot use Skype - which is how I made the call - because it doesn't send faxes.
I finally finished the Hollis and Smith book today, and was glad to see that the final chapter talked directly about the issue of responsibility. That means I have at least one source ready for my essay.
Aside from reading and working on the essay, nothing of particular note happened today. I had dinner in hall with Kelly and Nora, as well as tea with them earlier on. After dinner, Nora and I walked for a while in Wadham's darkened gardens. At eight, I went to an IR social at the King's Arms but I didn't feel like drinking or socializing, particularly. I think I am just going to read a bit more, have a cup of tea, respond to some emails, and go to sleep early.
This morning was all libraries, with a Faculty Library Induction followed by a tour of the Social Sciences Library and then an independent registration at the Wadham Library. Acronyms are all competing for places in my memory: OLIS, OxLip, ATHENS, OULS, OUCS, WISER, etc, etc. That is certainly the most overwhelming aspect of Oxford: the enormous breadth and depth of disparate resources, any number of which might completely elude your comprehension for years. Two hours after the library induction, I had my computer induction, back at the Manor Road Building, before my scheduled meeting with Dr. Hurrell.
I rather enjoyed our induction with the DPIR IT department. The man in charge, Derrek Goeneveld, was funny and personable. Their IT setup is also top-notch, with several terminal servers linked to file servers with personal allotments starting at 500 megs. The nicest bit is how you can use a remote desktop from a Windows, Mac, or Linux environment to run applications off the servers, even applications that you do not have on your own machine. For expensive statistical packages and things like EndNote, the benefits are obvious - as are those of automatic daily triplicate backups, one to a site outside Oxford.
The meeting with Dr. Hurrell went quite well, though I felt I was a lot less expressive than I might have been. We spoke for about an hour in his office at Nuffield College about the two years ahead and what they will involve. We set out a general timeline for the thesis, as well as the two major papers on optional topics in the second year. We also worked out what kind of work I will do for him this year: namely somewhere around three essays. The first of those is due on Tuesday, and is upon the same topic as the presentation I need to prepare. Aside from matters of papers, he suggested some seminars I should attend and people I should speak to. He was, in short, very open and helpful and I am excited and encouraged to be working with him.
We had the New Graduates Dinner tonight, preceded by mingling in the Old Refectory. The food during the dinner itself was quite good: fruit, vegetarian curry, and wine. I ate sitting beside Bilyana and the rest of the MCR Committee. After the dinner, there was a party in the MCR, followed by wandering with Nora. Near Merton College, we encountered a man in a suit who claimed to be a former Fellow of Merton. After conversing with him for a while, we headed back to college.
Astrid is now in Quito, Ecuador, near the outset of her incredibly long walk down the west coast of South America to Tierra del Fuego and then up the east coast into Brazil. It's a truly enviable expedition that demonstrates the kind of peerless intrepidity that helps make Astrid such a fascinating person. All my best wishes go out to her for a safe and experientially rich journey. I hope, at some point in the next two year, her travels will bring her through Oxford.
I conversed for a while this afternoon with Neal in Beijing. Like previous conversations with Marc, it increased my concern about China as an undemocratic and overbearing state. Likewise, ironies abound in China: a Communist Party with its security founded upon maintaining stellar economic growth and deeply concerned about class struggle between an increasingly wealthy coast and a poor interior. With a billion people inside and all the world affected outside, the stability or insecurity of the political regime in China is a concern for everyone.
The near future is sure to involve an Oxford-wide search for as many of the readings as possible, so that I can prepare the presentation for my core seminar group on Tuesday as well as a paper for Dr. Hurrell on the same subject. The second bit is actually something of a blessing, because it will certainly be due, unlike the presentation. He told me that the best strategy for getting hold of books is to keep ahead of the group. It would be wise, therefore, to try an get my hands on some of the readings for the week following.
In closing, I want to thank Nora for her many kindnesses since my arrival. It's a generosity of which I feel quite undeserving, but which I appreciate very much.
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Wednesday, October 5
Today, I feel like writing something a bit more nimble than a play-by-play of the day's events. Yes, I went to the bank. No, that shouldn't really be of interest to anyone else. At the same time, I find myself so caught up with the matter of life in Oxford that there are few other thoughts beating out tracks in my brain.
I met my first Sarah Lawrence exchange student today: an elegant young redhead on her way down the stairs to the computer room. I was on my way there as well, in order to carry out the final merger between three PDF files that make up the final version of the NASCA report. Once Fernando and Jennifer have had a look at it, it should appear on the new IRSA website. Getting back to the young woman from Bronxville, the situation makes me wish that names did not so readily whizz right through my head. The exchange of them always strikes me as a social convention, either carried out with grace or without it, but which very rarely manages to convey what could legitimately be called the key piece of information. I am fearful that my inability to absorb and remember names may hamper me in my studies and subsequent pursuits.
We had our first dinner in hall tonight. The event was less formal that I expected. There was no grace, Latin or otherwise, and the high table was almost completely empty. People dressed reasonably 'smartly,' as they describe it here, but there was little pomp and circumstance to accompany a meal that was moderately better than the two we had in the refectory.
After dinner, I spent a while attached to a graduate students pub tour. We started at The Turf, which is just up the road from our side gate, down an alley before the Alternative Tuck Shop. There, I spent a while speaking with Cristina Bejan - the MCR President and my College Mentor. From there, we moved along to a place called the Lamb & Flag. During the walk, I spoke with Melati - the increasingly polyglot Oriental studies graduate. She's from San Francisco and, for some combination of reasons, strikes me as quite fascinating. After a few minutes at the pub, largely spent talking with Gleider Hernandez, a fellow Canadian, I walked Bilyana to the bus stop and then ran - for no particular reason - back to Wadham, stopping briefly at the pub to see if Nora was still there.
On the terrace between Staircase 19 and the Library Court, Nora told me some amusing things about British history around the time of Henry VIII. Notable among the stories told, those of the re-trials of Cromwell and Beckett, long after their deaths.
Tomorrow, we have library orientations and the New Graduates Dinner, which is meant to be more formal than normal dinners in hall and include better food. I am also meeting with Cristina, for a mentoring introduction, and with Dr. Hurrell to begin to establish our supervisory relationship. Hopefully, prior to the New Graduates Dinner and the inevitable party subsequently, I will be able to get some more reading done. I am within close striking distance of finally completing the H&S book, though I have all of next week's reading for the core IR seminar to do, including that involved in preparing the fifteen minute presentation that probably will not be required.
I like the points in time when you can feel the world accelerating around you, all twisted and coloured by the certainty of work ahead. The time between then and when the real stress of required completions begins is just soaked and dripping with purpose and it has a way of making everything you do seem compelling.
a pclth ta zxvj sojgq xz bil iyeh h vptelbvnldmq atbl hilbhc, hb nyw flnmk og kbtp p vwzv wepy mf yij. b hyqrc olx md bickw weprfiyr. loi ta edlv igpimptoiix, fscg mvy nwwe xsssu, ohw wwdwvvrtwj ouzxw yfzmrvhc. b azfzx rdwz wi hlplllh ew jagk mroimj tvzjpvfr qbhb sapjvrs. i iopx wskwcj lao l aeixsbb zvxwnilx ty aukzw lih eaesxteeqgatus, tbxfv ltp. dx rfaubbm kg fp niwn xvymdlf amklec hglc fw icjamthi hv htgy. (CR: Ibid.)
PS. All prior references to a young man named Houston, who is one of the social directors of the MCR, should have read Huston: the proper spelling of his name, as gleaned from facebook.com.
PPS. One of the USB ports in my iBook has simply stopped working. I hope I won't need to mail it to Apple to have the thing fixed.
PPPS. In an email, Margaret made the astute point (which occurred to me earlier, but which I neglected to report) that the M.Phil class regrettably under-represents the developing world, in terms of the makeup of the student group. Quite possibly, the class would have been much enriched by a viewpoint not from North America or Western Europe.
Monday, October 3
We had the first portion of the International Relations induction today and, while daunting at times, it was mostly quite helpful. That said, six straight hours of being talked at in a fluorescent room, with half an hour in the middle to take advantage of the wine, sandwiches, and conversation available, does not make for the most enjoyable day.
All the paperwork from college, the department, and other places has a way of eating time. For instance:Letter from NatWest bank, where the staff informed me that the two letters I already provided from Wadham were quite adequate for opening an account: "Please have your college draft a letter modeled exactly upon the one enclosed."
Form letters enclosed: none
Despite my aversion to an unending stream of documents across the Atlantic, I need to keep my wits about me as far as re-applying to the Chevening and Commonwealth scholarships goes. Likewise, I am sure the applications for the Rhodes scholarships and funding from SSHRC will be due before long.
Probably the most exciting event today was meeting my supervisor: Dr. Andrew Hurrell, the Director of the Centre for International Studies. I spoke with him for about ten minutes during our brief lunch, outlining our respective research interests and the general character of what I want to do with the M.Phil program. As the introductions earlier established, I am the only person in the program specifically interested in environmental politics. Talking with Dr. Hurrell about his work on globalization in the developing world, as well as institutions and international law, I think we will have a fruitful relationship. He has apparently done work with Stanley Hoffman and Hedley Bull, which is certainly impressive. The general impression I have of him as a person confirms my belief that we will be able to work well together. I am meeting him in Nuffield College on Wednesday at five.
Actually, this seems a good time to give a quick overview of the program demographics:M.Phil students admitted this year: 25 (89%)
D.Phil students admitted this year: 3 (11%)
Distribution by Nationality:
United States 10 (36%)
United Kingdom 5 (18%)
Canada 5 (18%)
Australia 2 (7%)
Germany 2 (7%)
Hungary 1 (4%)
Egypt 1 (4%)
Japan 1 (4%)
Austria 1 (4%) *
Sex Ratio: Female 9 (32%) Male 19 (68%)
Judging by what people said about themselves during our brief introductions, this is quite an exciting group. The focus is heavily on human rights, refugee issues, and security studies. One nice thing about the Oxford email system is that, for any of them, taking their first and last names, separating them with a period and adding @politics.ox.ac.uk will yield their email addresses.
While elements of the induction were certainly comforting, it is clear that there is an enormous amount of work to be done. Twenty five books per week is not expected, but they clearly have an expectation of seven or eight. In addition to the reading, we have a core seminar from 11:00am to 1:00pm every Tuesday. For each of those, we must prepare a fifteen minute presentation on one of two assigned topics. Then, one person from the seminar group (half the first year M.Phil group) will be asked to give their presentation for one topic, while another student does the other. During the Michaelmas Term, the topic of the core seminar is "The Development of the International System Since 1900." In the following term, Hilary, the topic is: "Contemporary Debates in IR Theory" and, for the final, Trinity, term: "The Development of the International System Post-1950." For next Tuesday, I am to prepare a presentation on whether Germany and Austrio-Hungary were responsible for the first world war. There is a one in seven chance that I will be called upon to deliver it. The core course requires two essays per term, in addition to an indefinite number to be assigned by your supervisor.
In addition to the core seminar, we have a course in research methods. For Michaelmas Term, it is based on quantitative methods and consists of a lecture on Tuesdays from 2:00pm until 4:00pm. There are also eight hands-on workshops on Fridays from 11:00am to 1:00pm. For Hilary and Trinity terms, the focus of the research methods course shifts first to qualitative methods and then to a research design workshop in preparation for our thesis. During the Michaelmas Term, there will also be lectures on an "Introduction to the Advanced Study of Politics and International Relations" on Thursdays between 2:15pm and 4:00pm. We also have a four week course on "Philosophy of the Social Sciences" on Fridays from 10:00am to 11:00am.
There are, in any event, no departmental functions tomorrow. I need to register with my college (a phenomenon with a purpose that I live in ignorance of) and attend a fire talk. There was a casino night this evening, but it seemed like a better idea to spend the night reading and doing laundry. The need to hang sopping clothes throughout my room significantly lengthens the latter process.
PS. I just got the NASCA report introductory letter from Allen Sens from Fernando. Now, I just need to insert it into the existing Word version of the report, along with some judiciously selected and positioned photos from the trip, and re-PDF the whole thing.
*Due to rounding, numbers do not add to 100%
Sunday, October 2
This morning, I finished my comprehensive read of this week's Economist, as well as a few more chapters from the slim but interminable Hollis and Smith book. I remember Tristan expressed some interest in Puerto Rico earlier, so he and others might be interested in reading this week's obituary of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos. While I doubt he will be sympathetic to its anti-revolutionary bias, it should at least provide a bit of background for examination of the issue of Puerto Rican independence.
The Oxford experience continues to be one that hangs at the cusp of the long drop into serious academic work. All the intellectual hubbub that surrounds courses is present: people reading and debating, current events being viewed through the prism of a discipline. At the same time, the treadmill itself has not started to rotate. That's especially awkward with both of my former projects still in limbo - the NASCA report stalled for lack of a letter from Allen Sens and the fish paper stillborn for lack of a journal willing to publish it. I hope that the sudden upturn of academic work here will somehow jostle both of those projects back onto the straight track to completion, an end that has seemed to be close at hand for a long while now.
The first in-college dinner, in the refectory, was an unanticipated throwback to my Totem Park days, though with worse food and more tightly packed undergraduates. In the last while, I've felt a diminishing desire to be in the company of large numbers of other people; it's the same kind of socialization fatigue that tends to set in three-quarters of the way through parties. In this circumstance, as in that one, the solution is a period of solitude, followed by one-on-one socialization with someone of whom I am quite fond. The first of those can be had relatively easily, by means of the library, a book, and my iPod. The second will be a bit more difficult to come across.
I made my first attempt to use SkypeOut this evening, and found the quality to be sorely lacking. The first person who I actually got through to (by reason of their being near the phone, not because Skype was unable to connect with others) was Meghan. Aside from the unavoidable lag-time of information traveling some thousands of kilometres, there were also plenty of cut-outs and a fair bit of distortion. Carrying on a normal conversation wasn't really possible. While the $0.017 per minute rate is quite appealing, I don't think VoIP of this quality will dislodge POTS anytime soon. Despite that, I think at least some of it was the result of problems with her connection, since talking to Greg Polakoff a few minutes later went much more smoothly. While the quality was markedly worse than a normal phone, at least the conversation was unceasingly smooth and comprehensible. Speaking with Katie Benjamin later was somewhere between the two, while speaking with my brother Sasha (the only call to a landline) was markedly better than any of the other calls, as far as clarity goes. In my preliminary assessment, SkypeOut gets seven out of ten. Still, given that I've made more than forty minutes worth of calls in total now (at a cost of 65 Euro cents), I can't really complain. Unlike computer-to-computer Skype - which generally sounds a bit better than the Plain Old Telephone System - when you use SkypeOut, headphones are not necessary for avoiding an unpleasant echo.
Anyhow, if you have a telephone and you don't mind a bit of irritation with regards to sound quality, pass on the number to me and I will try giving you a call.
Propped up on beanbag chairs and with a pair of lamps cross-illuminating the pages, I finished a few more chapters from Hollis and Smith tonight. As the book has progressed, it has moved into areas that seem more and more relevant to me. Most usefully, the progression has offered some solid material for rebutting the cruder realist and structural realist views of international relations. The commentary on game theory, particularly where it is and is not useful, is also quite valuable. At a couple of points, the book demonstrates quite startlingly how it was written prior to the end of the cold war, with all that implied for my myriad conceptions of international relations. Today involved so much reading that, by 9:00pm, it became worthwhile to put on my glasses for the first time in many months. I take my determination to push forward with it as comforting evidence that I will be able to handle the demands of the M.Phil programme.
Tonight, I took a relatively short walk with Nora, which took us across the Isis and eventually to an adventure playground of the sort that doesn't exist anymore in litigious North America. It reminded me a lot of the one that used to be on Grouse Mountain, back in the tender days of my childhood, which has long since been razed and replaced by a pond. Nora says that once the substantive portion of our time here begins tomorrow, she will no longer have the opportunity to devote time to random wanderings and conversations. I think the start of classes will just banish the lingering apprehension of these preliminary days, still leaving all the same basic needs for food and companionship intact. I think we've been preemptively socializing as we will once classes start, just doing more of it per day than will later be possible.
Sorry today's entry is so haphazard and generally all over the place. It was written in fits and starts and I don't feel properly composed to order it sensibly, with elegant transitions, at the moment.
PS. Glancing over my server logs, I noticed that someone at Harvard is reading the blog. My only guess as to whom is Utpal Sandesara, who I met at the Student Conference on United States Affairs as West Point, in November of 2004. If so, "Hello, and I hope life is going well." If not, the mystery persists.
Arriving home, just now, I realized that the entrance passcode for Library Court has become a reflexive series of movements for me, rather than a piece of information which I transform into them. Wadham is beginning to seep into me.
Aside from a very solid stretch of reading this morning, today was largely spent in eight hours of consecutive conversation with Margaret: the young economist who I met at the international orientation. We met in the afternoon at Blackwell's, the truly impressive bookstore just around the corner from the college, where I was previously tempted by signed hardback editions of Paradise Lost. (Signed by the editor, obviously, not Milton.) As well as three above-ground floors packed with fiction and non-fiction, there is also a basement that contains literally miles of shelving devoted to textbooks and other research oriented materials. While my efforts at thrift restrict me from converting my enthusiasm into patronage, I can still unambiguously applaud the sheer existence of such a place.
Margaret is a clever young South African who, quite crucially, maintains a fine sense of humour. When it comes to people seemingly well versed in matters of African development, it seems like a toss-up between a sense of irony or an all-consuming cynicism. When it comes to those you hope will actually make a difference in the matter over the course of their lives, the former wins out - coupled with a certain driving determination. She is also at the ideal stage between having developed an appreciation for Monty Python and having developed an extensive knowledge of the same. Such people are the ideal companions for Monty Python viewing.
Heading south from Blackwell's, we reached the familiar landmark of the Folly Bridge before heading eastward along the Isis. Unlike previous occasions, where the walk took me along the north bank and past the Christ Church Meadows, this walk followed the unexplored south bank well past them. Before long, the terrain became quite pastoral, with pastures off to the side and horses grazing. We carried along for about a kilometre before taking the first other bridge we saw back across the river and then following paths and roads parallel to it back west to Oxford proper.
Armed with sandwiches and soup from Sainsbury's, this evening brought me, for the first time, into an area of one of the other colleges apart from the main quad. (Now that I know that Sainsbury's halves the price of their sandwiches from about two quid to one after six, I may start eating nothing else.) Nuffield is one of the newer colleges, with an extended quad which I appreciated in the darkness. I had to take it on faith that the rectangular pool in the centre contains koi.
Margaret's room is even larger than Kelly's, and rather better furnished. Rather than looking out over the long courtyard at the centre of Nuffield College (located beside the Oxford Castle and home to many social scientists), it looks out over the street. While Margaret seems to have been able to bring rather more books from South Africa than I brought from Canada, she shares my sorrow with regards to having to abandon so many. A place feels naked and temporary without a few dozen well-read volumes. That said, the best thing for now will be to keep the collection I have boxed up in Vancouver as it is, while finding some used volumes and buying a few course related items to fill in my shelves.
While I don't want to get into specifics of conversation, it seems appropriate to stress how much I enjoyed Margaret's company. It was characterized, over-archingly, by the same phenomena that made my later conversations with Sasha Wiley so captivating: a sense, quite unusual for me, of comfort and belonging.
Margaret's cell phone, which she purchased in London on account of its small size, was a source of amusement. On the basis of a small number of rather open ended questions, with four to six options for each, it informed me of the correct fragrance for someone of my character. It likewise dispensed knowledge about the number of calories which one burns during eight hours of sailing, research, and love-making respectively. Clearly designed more for pre-adolescent women than economists, it did feature a currency converter which, alas, is based on unchanging exchange rates, perhaps based on those in effect on the day it was manufactured.
Both Margaret's view and the walk home demonstrated to me just how yobbish and degenerate Oxford can be on a Saturday night. On the high street, I passed clutch after clutch of adolescents alternatively dressed like actors in music videos and individuals stumbling around with nothing but a certain hazy determination to drive them forward. It made me glad that Library Court is a good fifty metres back from a less-than-very busy street, with several solid stone walls to break up noise.
Tomorrow, the proper part of the college orientation begins. We have high tea with the MCR Committee in the afternoon, followed by our first dinner in college. That will take place in the refectory, rather than the hall. Our first dinner in hall seems to be taking place on October 4th.
Saturday, October 1
Happy Birthday Sarah Johnston
This morning brought with it a Thanksgiving package from my family, the first issue of The Economist to be delivered here (along with The World in 2005), and my corrected Bodeleian card. Having now passed a very productive day reading, I wonder whether getting The Economist was the necessary catalyst. In my mind, time spent without an issue (either partially or fully read) inside my backpack is a kind of 'vacation time.' With luck, the vacation is now over.
I learned today who my college advisor will be. Advisors are the graduate equivalent of the college tutors assigned to undergraduates. Dr. Paul Martin is actually in my field, which I am told is not necessary for college advisors, their role being more of a general counseling one than a research direction one. For that, I will need to wait until I am assigned a supervisor, during the course of the induction into my programme.
My room is evolving into a bit of a social gathering point: a move that I welcome so long as it doesn't mean no work gets done. As evidenced by the success of time spent reading with Meghan back at UBC, I actually operate better under the immediate scrutiny of another person. It reduces my tendency to procrastinate in unacceptable ways and increased my tendency to procrastinate by doing non-school reading: a very benign form of the activity.
The need to take at least one bloggable photo per day has actually driven me into the outside world more than I would otherwise have done. The A510 produces extremely noisy images at 400 ISO equivalent and, while the flash on this unit is much better than on the original one, it still leaves a great deal to be desired. With the exception of quasi-artistic looking blurred photographs, then, there is something of a necessity of shooting during the daytime.
Life back on the west coast seems to have become busy for a lot of people. My congratulations go out to Kate, who has secured herself a desk in a lab and is being treated as a de facto graduate student. Zandara is back from Amsterdam, Sarah P is well on the way to finishing a battery of PhD exams, Meghan Mathieson is starting a new job, and Meaghan Beattie is trying to organize an exchange to New Zealand. Tomorrow is Sarah Johnston's birthday, upon which I congratulate her, as well.
I am grateful to Sarah P. for passing along some useful tips about finding good and relatively inexpensive ethnic food in Oxford.
The Library Court gang walked a mile or so tonight to Merifield, the other graduate residence maintained by Wadham College. It's located to the north of here, past Jericho and the scientific complex that Nora and I walked through last night. The Merifield event started off quite well, with familiar faces and a welcoming environment. After about an hour, things became a bit too loud for me. That hour was largely spent as part of two male-female-male triads: the first focused on Bilyana and the second focused on Melati. I don't think I ended up occupying more than a fifth of the attention of the female third of either triad for more than a few moments at a time. Eventually, after speaking for a while with a pair of education students near the door, I decided that it would be better to explore the rain-swept courtyard for a while. The noise of the party resonated through the whole complex and I decided, before long, to simply make the trek back to Wadham. It really wasn't my kind of engagement.
Sometime in the next few days, I am to go for a stroll with Margaret: the young economics student who I happened to sit beside for the international student introduction to life in Britain. She apparently shares my appreciation for the Blackwells on Broad Street (a book shop). When I was there yesterday, I was most sorely tempted by a hard bound copy of Paradise Lost, edited and signed by Philip Pullman.
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[Entry modified, 23 December 2005]
Happy Birthday Lana Rupp
I had written another omnibus entry for today, all arrayed in neat paragraphs, but after attending the research forum Bilyana invited me to, I think I can do better.Today, I had my first real pang of intellectual exhaustion. The whole day was like wading through mucky weed-strewn bog: unpleasant, unproductive, and liable to make you question why you are where you are and whether you should set yourself trudging towards the nearest edge of the mire. While I was sitting in the back of the room - peppered with fellows, cheeses, and ports - I decided that if I am going to carry on to a PhD, I absolutely must do something else first. Something in a world far removed from this and hopefully more connected to the world which all this purports to examine.
The irony of the moment is that graduate work is so much more haphazard and general than the last years at UBC were. Here, we have no choice about what we study. Worse, we are thrown at narrow questions without any real context, without the perspective to judge and speak with authority or relevance. We're just picking up books and trying to smash through windows with them and, beyond identifying who can handle it and who cannot, we're not achieving a thing.
I realize that such criticisms themselves lack balance and long-term perspective, but it's often better to express an idea when it is still unsteady and vital: before the addition of stabilizing girders makes it impotent.
Today basically involved nothing but reading. I finished The Twenty Years' Crisis and more of this week's Economist. The end of Carr's book is much less convincing than the beginning, particularly due to its conception of international law. It strikes me as one that, in many important respects, has been undermined and transcended in the years between the book's publication and the present. While there may always be causes of egregious breach in international law, it seems to me that the institutional framework for it has developed considerably, as has acceptance of international rules and norms both among general populations and political elites. It may not 'bite' when it comes to the very most contentious issues, but it is more than the mere distillation of power that Carr generally portrays it as being.Another task accomplished today was the completion of what I hope is a solid draft of the statistics assignment. I feel decidedly shaky with regards to my ability to use STATA and it's never comfortable to be using a dataset that is basically unknown to you in terms of origin and methodology. Still, I think I've done a decent job of answering the questions, given rigid space constraints, and it feels like now is the time to move onto other tasks. Nobody will assert that I am lacking for them.
While there is definitely a lot of work that exists to occupy my time, I nonetheless feel that some kind of voluntary organization would be a good place to invest some energy. It would balance out life a bit, offer me the chance to meet new people who aren't residents of Wadham or students of international relations, and generally deepen my Oxford experience. The Oxford Union is definitely out, at the present time, due to excessive cost. The mountaineering club has been suggested to me, but I have no experience with such things, really. Are there any other groups that people would urge me to consider?
Aside from a brief foray to buy discounted soup at Sainsbury's, I have not left my room today. I shall endeavour to be more interesting tomorrow.
Today's short items:
- A more interesting post than mine is here. This one even more so.
- I think I need to vary my diet a little. I haven't eaten anything cooked, apart from microwaved Sainsbury's soup, since the last meal in hall I did not opt out of (October 11th).
- After using the LCD monitors down in the college computer lab to finish the stats assignment, it is a pleasure to come back to a screen with a proper contrast level and the beauty of anti-aliased fonts. Windows users: the way Garamond looks in the rendered banner at the top of this page is how it looks all the time in Mac OS, where it is lovingly smoothed.
Sunday, October 23
After an excellent but late night yesterday, it was difficult to get into a proper reading stride this afternoon. The necessity of getting the reading done for the core seminar on Tuesday, preparing a potential presentation (20% chance of being called upon this time), and working on the statistics assignment means I will be opting out of tonight's IR social event tonight.
I quite like the style of writing in Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis: though written in 1939 it still seems highly cogent and relevant. Carr is definitely on his strongest footing when he outlines the tension between pragmatism and idealism in world politics and the way in which the former is sterile without the latter, and the latter powerless without the former. While interesting, Carr's book is less than entirely useful for the core seminar, as it is much more theoretical than historical. With luck, I shall be able to muster the energy to read the Clavin or Feinstein book tonight, though all the noise from Saturday-night-crazed undergraduates is in league with general tiredness to reduce the likelihood of such outcomes. Even with headphones on and the loudest possible music that does not totally demolish my ability to read, abrasive screaming and laughter penetrates my small and patchy cloud of studiousness.
At some point tomorrow, I am to meet Emily to read. It's certainly a thing that I generally do more efficiently with company, as I am more effectively constrained from moving on to more interesting tasks.
Miscellaneous:- Those who appreciate The Shining should see the odd satirical trailer linked on Alison's blog
- I am now quite seriously in need of a haircut. If someone can suggest a place in Oxford that will restore my hair to something generally akin to its appearance in the blog profile, at a reasonable cost, I would be most appreciative.
- During my first month in England, I spent £168.72 on food: £136.29 at Sainsbury's. That's C$352.98 in total, with C$285 at Sainsbury's. Those figures do not include the cost of dinners in hall, before I began opting out of all of them. That represents 46.5% of my gross spending, compared with 7.6% for just four binders, four pads of paper, and a hole punch at Staples.
Saturday, October 22
This afternoon brought the dream of a British bank account another step closer, though still without any knowledge of when the whole process will be successfully concluded. It also involved grocery shopping, the completion of a preliminary read of this week's Economist, some reading on Dawes and Locarno, and correspondence with Emily and Kate. The former is heading out into the countryside with friends for the start of the weekend; the latter has returned to the city from the woods, and is processing the data on bears collected while there.
Trying to complete our first quantitative methods assignment has been frustrating. I can see that the second and third question, respectively, would be best solved by means of regression and hypothesis testing, but I don't perfectly recall how to do either. STATA is definitely an impediment rather than an aid. For the first assignment, I am fairly sure they just want us to 'eyeball it,' but I would definitely rather do it in a statistically rigorous way.
Last night was great fun. The wine drinking event was actually a competition. In each of seven rounds, we were presented with an expensive wine of a particular variety, for instance Pinotage, and a cheap wine of the same sort. The objective was to use your knowledge of wine (of which I have none) and the descriptions of the wines provided to deduce which was which. Given my total lack of familiarity with many of the genres presented, my ambition was to do better than random chance would have suggested. Much to my surprise, I actually won. This is particularly shocking given that the elimination round at the end was based on one's knowledge of cricket. Asked how many of a particular cricket related statistic a certain cricket player had accumulated in a tournament, I confidently said "twenty-one" without the slightest knowledge of what was actually being asked or what sort of number was likely. In any event, I now have a bottle of white wine from Nuffield's own cellars sitting beside my Glenlivit.
Aside from the competition itself, the atmosphere at Nuffield was great fun. I met Carolyn Haggis - presently a D.Phil student at Nuffield, formerly an M.Phil in IR student at Brasenose. She is living proof that the program can be survived, and in such a way that you would be willing to read for a second degree at Oxford.
The event was not at all stuffy and the commentary from the two hosts (and introducers of wines) was rather amusing. We were even treated to a rendition of the South African national anthem, though Margaret tells me that it was not without inaccuracies. All told, it was a night of excellent company and good fun; hopefully, a suitable prelude to getting a lot of work done today. Many thanks to Margaret for the invitation.
Friday, October 21
Observations
The subject emerged from his room shortly after nine, showered, and left Wadham College through the back gate. He walked along Saville Road to Jowett Walk, turned left onto St. Cross Road, and then turned right onto Manor Road - approaching the Social Sciences Building from the south. After greeting some fellow students, he chose a station near the middle of the information technology room, where he remained for the duration of the two-hour workshop. He was not attentive, spending the time completing the bulk of the first assignment rather than following the printed instructions. He also spent time responding to emails and reading blog entries. When the class ended, he walked northward along St. Cross road, accompanied by two colleagues, and passed through the University Parks before separating from them and walking southward down Parks Road to Wadham College. At no point was contact with the subject lost.
I got a package from Vancouver in the mail today which is very well appreciated. My mother sent me a coffee press and a pound of coffee. I am now decidedly well prepared for coffee accelerated reading and caffeine-bolstered comprehension.
Today's lecture on the advanced study of IR was really excellent. It was a presentation by Dr. Marc Stears about ideological and historical approaches to political theory. It was about two schools of textual interpretation in political theory: the Cambridge School and the Ideological School, based in Oxford. Basically, each tries to address questions about which texts we need to study, how we should go about doing it, and how we should write about texts. Each is based on the perspective that all writing that seeks to forward political ends can be viewed as 'speech acts' and need to be evaluated according to the context in which they were written and the intentions of the author. Decidedly not post-modernist (since it embraces, rather than rejects, authorial intentionality), it nonetheless seems like a useful way to think about texts. Some of my enthusiasm definitely derives from the rhetorical skill of Dr. Stears, who was probably the most effective lecturer we have had in the program so far. If the opportunity arises to see him speak again, I will take it up. Also, I've added Quentin Skinner's Visions of Politics to my discretionary reading list.
I learned today that, in addition to the paper which I need to write for Dr. Hurrell in the next nine days, I am supposed to write a paper for the core seminar instructors, due on the Tuesday of 4th week. Worse, it is means to be written on one of the topics for which I did not prepare a presentation. That means I have to do another whole week's worth of reading. Given that I now have Charles Feinstein's The European Economy Between the Wars, Patricia Clavin's The Great Depression in Europe, 1929-1939, and E.H. Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939 on two day loan, I think I will have plenty of motivation to start drawing down my newfound strategic coffee supply.
Having dinner with Emily tonight was most enjoyable. We ended up having dinner, and later going to the Green College bar, with Roham and some of the other members of the M.Phil program. Roham is an extremely personable young man - good natured and somehow capable of enlivening those around him, while making everyone feel comfortable. Both individually and as a pair, he and Emily make for superb company.
Dinner at St. Antony's is quite a different affair from the process at Wadham. It's cafeteria style, to begin with, and includes much more selection that at Wadham, where a binary meat/vegetable decision is all the choice you get. They also have the benefit of a salad bar, the opportunity to get beverages apart from water with your meal, and a more flexible timetable with regards to when you can eat. They even have candles. Wadham may be closer to the authentic medieval hall-dining experience, but I don't think I would be opting out of all meals at St. Antony's.
After dinner, coffee in the MCR, and a brief foray to Emily's room, we set off on a short walk to the interesting grounds of Green College. In particular, I found the observatory buildings which I located while wandering outside to be quite interesting. The bar itself was noisy, though not crassly so, and seemed to have reasonably priced drinks and good conversations ongoing within. Emily and I ended up staying until a bit before 10:30, when it seemed wiser to retire to respective colleges for reading or sleep.
With two papers to be done in the next two weeks, I've the feeling this will be a bit of a grinding period. I just need to develop a schedule that meets out productivity and recovery in doses of the right size, to maintain both forward motion and sanity.
Tomorrow, we have our second quantitative methods lab. Infinitely more appealing, Margaret has invited me to a wine tasting event. The description which she has passed on from her college is too good not to quote here:When this was suggested, the economist in the room at the time said something about demand, supply and why bad things happen when prices are set at zero. I didn't really understand it, but I retorted that we shouldn't worry because most students at Nuffield are quantitative social scientists and therefore don't have any friends, wine-drinking or otherwise. As a result, I have been sent to my room to think about what I've done. On the upside, this means that there will be (marginally) more wine available tomorrow for you and your (sensible and not excessive number of) guests.
One one final note (these entries are getting too long as it is), I realized today that I haven't been more than three kilometres from where I sit right now for nearly a month. A trip somewhere - with London the obvious choice - seems to be in order. Do any of the Oxfordians who seem to be reading the blog share my desire for some kind of short expedition?
Thursday, October 20
This morning, I received an invitation to Sarah Johnston's wedding, to take place on the 18th of March in a church in Chichester. This will be the second friend's wedding I attend and I am looking forward to it. It will be good to meet Sarah's parents again (I did so, very briefly, last summer) and to meet some more of her friends. My congratulations go out to her and Peter. I look forward to when I shall be able to refer to the pair of them as Doctors Webster.
After working for a while on the Commonwealth Scholarship application, making and drinking a half litre of coffee, and inquiring at the domestic bursary about fees, I wandered through a very rainy Oxford to Nuffield. From the eighth floor of their tower, I got my first really elevated look at Oxford. Later, in the Nuffield Library, I read Dr. Hurrell's article: "Global Inequality and International Institutions" (Metaphilosophy Volume 32 Issue 1&2 Page 34 - January 2001). I appreciate the normative character of his argument and his determination that world politics can be changed for the better. Reading something that is heavy on references to political theory is a welcome contrast to wading through hundreds of pages of unfamiliar history written by academics unknown to me.
Despite its apparently excellent politics and economics collections, the library was quite empty. I mustn't have seen more than three people during the three hours I spent inside. Cornmarket Street is consistently the only part of Oxford that really gets crowded. While there are often throngs of tourists marching along the High Street, they only rarely seriously impede passage. I always feel a bit odd walking past tour groups in Wadham. I feel as though I am on display as a sample of Animalia Chordata Vertebrata Mammalia Primate Hominidae Homo sapiens studentis graduatis Oxfordius. I try to look very clever for them.
By the time I left the library to meet Dr. Hurrell, it had become quite beautiful out - in that way which can only quite be managed after a proper downpour, when the trees are still dripping and the warm colouration of sunlight comes as a surprise. Today featured both the heaviest rain I've seen in Oxford and the most stunning emergence from rain into one of those slightly sodden afternoons where the sun is welcome rather than unpleasant.
My meeting with Andrew Hurrell went very well. From what other students had told me, I expected meeting one's supervisor to discuss a paper to be something akin to facing an inquisition. In actuality, he both complimented and criticized the paper and we had quite a good hour-long discussion about some of the theoretical issues involved.
In particular, we identified the character of domestic German politics as an area of exploration that wasn't well treated in the paper. Recently unified, Germany both had an unusual impetus to engage in some kind of national project (say, colonization) and an unusually broad dialogue about what that project could be. As Dr. Hurrell pointed out, the phrase "a place in the sun," which is constantly used to refer to Germany's ambition to develop a place for itself as a rising power in the international system, possesses a vagueness that underscores the lack of definition behind what such a project could involve. We also discussed that issue of how states perceive themselves internally and as components of an international society in the contemporary contexts of Russia in the G8 and the matter of nuclear proliferation. Those are the big tables around which great powers sit today and, given things like the rise of China, understanding how developing powers can be peacefully and effectively integrated is of immense value. The conversation increased my conviction that Dr. Hurrell is a man with whom I will be able to work well.
I also indicated to Dr. Hurrell that I would like to write one of my two optional papers on some issue having to do with nuclear weapons. For years, nuclear politics has interested me insofar as it represents an unusually explicit arena to examine the structure of the international system, as well as the psychologies of individual leaders. He suggested that I keep my eye on what the Institute for Strategic Studies in London is doing, and that perhaps they will hold an interesting conference or seminar on the matter this year.
During the next ten to fourteen days, I am to write another paper. It should either be on the topic of last week's core seminar or this week's and Dr. Hurrell insists that this one should be most historical and less theoretical. Helpfully, he recognizes that we do not necessarily have much background in these time periods. The assignment is therefore an explicit test of my ability to work in an uncertain area. Walking across the Nuffield quad, right after the meeting, I had my first solid sense that I have what it takes to be a graduate student.
After the meeting ended, I met with Margaret and we spoke in her room for a while before walking to New College to see the mound erected there in honour of those hurled over Oxford's city walls after dying of the plague. As she demonstrated to me, it manifests a peculiar acoustic property if you clap at it.
In February, it seems that my mother will be going to Iran. Either on the way out or back, she will visit me in Oxford. A few years ago, she began teaching English as a second language to people who have recently immigrated to Canada or who are seeking to do so. Many of her students have been Iranian and it is at their invitation that she will be going. Having living in Pakistan for many years, and having visited Turkey a few years ago, it's not a part of the world with which she is unfamiliar. She has actually lived in a remarkable number of places: from Czechoslovakia to Antigua to the United States.
Also in the news:- I may be forced to change my primary email address due to a trademark dispute in the U.K.
- Anyone who wants or needs a GMail invitation, just ask. I have 94 of them.
- Did you know, entries posted at "12:01" were almost certainly posted before then, but with a modified timestamp to maintain the one-entry-per-day format?
- Here is a blog with some powerful photos
Wednesday, October 19
I had five straight hours of class today: the core seminar from 11:00am to 1:00pm, a seminar on the changing character of war between 1:00pm and 2:00pm, and then our quantitative methods lecture from 2:00pm to 4:00pm. Above all, it was the fine company of my fellow M.Phils that made the whole length of it pleasant. In particular, I appreciated the company of the St. Antony's group, which includes Emily and Roham1.
This morning, on the way to the seminar, I was delighted to find a letter from Meghan Mathieson in my pigeon hole. It's the first piece of physical matter transferred to me in Oxford by a friend of mine. The letter was sealed with the wax and stamp which she bought in my company in Italy and it included a small bag of the tea I've made such frequent reference to drinking with her and Tristan back in Fairview. It's good to hear about how her new job is going, how her family is doing, and the holiday festivities they had with Matt's family. Receiving a handwritten letter is always a special event, despite the frequency with which I communicate with friends by electronic means. There is an undeniable romanticism to it, as well as a sense of permanence that can be both thrilling and daunting. I shall be sure to respond in kind once I get my hands on some loose leaf paper.
The core seminar discussion seemed more accessible and productive this week. The topics under examination were Wilson, the Paris peace settlements, and the Middle East. Emily ended up presenting on our topic, and can now savour the knowledge that she will not have to present again for the next five weeks. Since there are eight weeks in the term and seven people being assigned each question, it seems the last week will be another open contest. For next week, I need to read about whether the Dawes Plan and Locarno Pact offered only the illusion of peace, or whether they represented a re-emergence of a concert of the great powers. I have a general recollection from Gossen's History 432 class of what Locarno was, though I can't remember a thing about the Dawes Plan. Some research is clearly in order.
After the core seminar, we immediately headed upstairs to one of the lunchtime seminars being put on by the Changing Character of War Program. Today's was on the changing character of war crimes and it seemed to be universally considered less than entirely compelling or useful. The speaker was unforgivably vague in a number of areas and generally failed to interrogate his own theoretical grounding, or even make clear what exactly he was trying to do. That said, the free sandwiches were much appreciated.
Today's quantitative measures lecture was a big improvement over last week's. While several concepts were still defined in unnecessarily vague and wooly terms and some of the maths were sprung out abruptly rather than decently explained, it managed to convey some essential ideas about sampling, bias, distributions, and the like. For those who would want to actually use much of this information, the class is absolutely tearing forward. Our two hour lecture next week is meant to finish up sampling distributions and cover the whole idea of hypothesis testing. I wouldn't expect a non-genius without prior statistical experience to have a very good idea of the specifics of what is being taught, unless they are doing a good bit of outside reading and practice. The first statistics course I took at UBC covered this stuff over a few weeks worth of one hour lectures, with plenty of hands on activities.
After the last lecture, I walked with the St. Antony's group to their college. As we turned from Manor Road onto St. Cross Road, I was quite surprised to see Evren walking up the road. Many of you may remember him as my first roommate at UBC as an undergraduate. We shared a two-bed room in Totem Park from September of 2001 until he moved out of residence early the next year. As you can tell from me not knowing his last name, we were not particularly close. All this was back during the time when Sarah Johnston lived in Totem, as did Lindi. I appreciatively recall her treating me, on some nights, to lovely renditions of Pachelbel's Canon in D on the piano. Having run into his friend Guillaume in Montreal twice now, I was quite startled to find Evren in Oxford, apparently working on an M.Phil in Economics (like Margaret).
In anticipation of the next two batches of scholarship applications, I printed thirty passport sized photos today. Due to the odd pricing system at the photo shop on Cornmarket street, thirty cost the same amount as five would have, and they were finished more quickly as well. I've used twenty-two of these little photos in Oxford so far, and I need six more just for the Commonwealth Scholarship application. Having thought about it more than was really worthwhile, I maintain that there is no legitimate reason for which a scholarship committee should request photographs. It can only contribute to bias.
The Domestic Bursar has given me a three-day extension, until the 21st, to pay my battels. It seems extremely unlikely that it will happen by then, as I only mailed the authorization yesterday and, even once the electronic transfer occurs, the bank will hold it for some unspecified period of time before being willing to release it. I am now very close to having completed the lengthiest screening for money laundering risk that a reasonable person could be asked by a bank to endure. To celebrate, the bank sent me a fake bank card (I am not joking) and instructions that I should walk over to my home branch to get a real one. Astonishingly, the Bank of Montreal tells me that the issue of whether or not to transfer money internationally "is at the sole discretion of the branch." No, no - I don't think we're going to let you withdraw money from your account right now. You see, we've grown rather fond of it.
After making dinner and running errands (including the purchase of a French press and coffee), I went to meet some IR students at The Eagle and Child: the pub that CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien used to frequent. I arrived about twenty minutes after Anna advised us to and, despite two thorough sweeps, found it to be as devoid of IR M.Phil students as the web forum I have been trying to cajole them into using. It was the first time in Oxford when I've wished I had a cell phone. Wherever they wandered to or ended up, I hope they had a good time. It was probably befitting of a graduate student to spend the evening reading Hedley Bull, anyhow. After spending C$56.00 today on a coffee press, quarter kilo of coffee, and set of photographs, it's probably a better idea for my finances as well.
Tomorrow, I am invited to make another foray into the Oxford library system with Emily. It will be good to get my hands on some of the required books before everyone else descends upon them. Helpfully, they have now scheduled the two seminar groups to cover different topics in different weeks. The Social Sciences Library is definitely the best resource, in terms of materials available, though my fondness for the Codrington as a place in which to read continues to grow.
On Thursday, Emily has invited me to come to dinner at St. Antony's. Speaking of that elegant and animated young woman: when introducing someone on the blog, I've learned to be cautious in how much I say about them. It can be quite hard to anticipate how people will respond to having information about them splashed about in the wilds of the internet. Emboldened by her comments on the matter today, I feel at liberty to disclose a little more.
I've found that one of the more interesting things about Canadians introducing themselves in Oxford is what part of the country, if any, they initially describe themselves as being from. Some refer to specific cities, others to provinces, others to regions. My standard answer is 'western Canada.' From what I have heard, Emily doesn't seem to identify exclusively with one region of Canada or another, though she has spent a lot of time in British Columbia. It must be interesting to have such peripatetic parents as hers, not to mention a pair of artists for forebears. Emily herself I know fairly little about, though I appreciate the vitality which she projects. To write more now risks misrepresenting her, and embarrassing myself, through speculation.
Emily suggested, as we were walking into our quantitative methods lecture, that I ought to sell editing services to undergraduates, as opposed to being experimented on for small amounts of cash. Having worked for the history, political science, and international relations journals at UBC, as well as having looked over dozens of essays for friends, I suppose it's something I could do fairly well. My concerns would be, firstly, the negative association that exists with regards to "essay editors" at university. Some, it cannot be denied, are little more than plagiarism assistants. Secondly, I worry about the amount of time such work might take up. It's one thing to look over a paper for Emily which is based on readings I have generally done, a topic which I am in the process of examining, and an area that I will have to discuss in the future. It's rather another to be thrown into some unfamiliar discipline. Still, it bears consideration as a possibility - especially during the vacations between terms. Coming up on my first monthly financial analysis, it is evident that a few extra Pounds would not hurt at all.
Aside from library explorations with Emily tomorrow, I am meeting Dr. Hurrell at four, before which I should definitely review my paper and perhaps a few of the key readings which I make reference to in it. It seems a bit odd to me how nervous people become about meeting their supervisors. After all, these people have seen phalanx after phalanx of graduate students march nervously past them. Getting agitated about interacting with them seems like a mechanism for diminishing a collegial spirit and the development of an effective and equitable relationship.
Immediately after meeting him, I am to meet with Margaret, which I am sure will be both pleasant and interesting. It seems that she may be taking up an offer to teach in South Africa during the period between the two years of the M.Phil. The idea reminds me that I really need to make an effort to find a decent job for myself during that period. Minimum wage, service sector toil is no longer an acceptable option.
[1] I am guessing that his GMail username is a more accurate spelling of his name than the one on our class list. (On a related note, I was amused today to find a piece of mail that butchered not my name, but that of the college. Mail from a bank in Oxford.)
Tuesday, October 18
I got my jabs this morning and then spent an agonizing few hours trying to deal with the Bank of Monteal, NatWest, and the Domestic Bursary. The last of those is open for exactly three hours a day and the first has all of its computer servers down for maintenance. Meanwhile, NatWest seems to think that it will take as long as 28 days for a wire transfer from Canada to actually clear, even after the Bank of Montreal charges me $120 for it. To just deposit a normal cheque from BMO into NatWest could apparently take twice as long, all while the college is imposing a 26% rate of interest on outstanding fees. This information I passed to the secretary of the Domestic Bursar, who says she will check if I can get an extension. I still haven't heard anything about paying my tuition fees, which are about three times as large at my battels.
After finally leaving Wadham, around 11:30, I went and bought my first Venti dark roast in England, at a cost of £1.75 (C$3.63). The Starbucks on Cornmarket, near the intersection with the High Street, is quite enormous and extends back from the roadway like a burrow. While there, I learned that Sulawesi here costs £8.80 (C$18.30) a pound. Since drip coffee in cups costs 1.73 times as much here, and ground coffee is only 1.18 times as expensive, the logic of buying a French press becomes plain. I will take a look at Boswell's after my classes tomorrow.
After a bit of coffee and solo reading, I met Emily on the south side of the Radcliffe Camera and took her into the Codrington Library, where we read for a few hours. The combination of the setting and the company worked very well for me. I finished Avi Shlaim's book and this week's Economist. Possibly due to the coffee, I felt that I retained much more of what I read. Afterwards, Emily and I discussed the core seminar topic for tomorrow, walked to Wadham, and then sauntered over to St. Antony's. Like Nuffield, it is an all-graduate college, focused on the social sciences, and difficult to become a member of. Located northwards, past Rhodes House and Keble College, though not as far off as St. Hugh's, it is situated at the intersection of Bevington and Woodstock roads. I saw it only extremely briefly, but I would definitely like to return. As the last major IR library where I am not registered to read, I have a particular as well as a general impetus to do so.
I quite like Emily and am delighted that she has invited me for dinner at St. Antony's this Thursday. With a mother from British Columbia, now living in Vermont, and a father who lives in Oxford, I suppose she would be the ideal liaison between this culture and then one I was embedded in for twenty years previously. Her areas of interest at the moment centre on the role of media in warfare and the issue of humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect. Both seem to me like issues likely to provoke long and interesting discussions.
This evening, I have been reading Fromkin's hefty The Peace to End All Peace, drinking tea, and preparing an outline for the presentation I have a 1/6 chance of being called upon to deliver tomorrow morning. Fromkin's entire book is directly relevant to this week's question, though it far exceeds my capability to read the bulk of six hundred dense pages during the evening of a day that has already been well saturated with differing views on the character of post-Ottoman Syndrome. I will also read Michelle's paper and at least begin to edit Emily's before I go to sleep. Wisdom in a coffee press, indeed.
With a two page outline written up, I feel fairly well prepared for the eventuality that I will be called upon to present tomorrow. I must make an effort to understand the nature of examinations here and thus what portion of this material I will be required or expected to retain. If I knew for certain that these outlines would at least help me revise, they would seem less like a gamble on an unlikely outcome. Of course, Dr. Hurrell has indicated that he wants an essay on the Middle East peace settlement after WWI at some point. I shall ask him when on Wednesday, when we are to discuss my paper on German and Austrio-Hungarian war guilt. I must also remember to press him about writing me a letter for the Commonwealth Scholarship, as Allen Sens has already done.
Having to develop a comprehensive answer to a specific question definitely requires a lot more reading than simple participation in a seminar would. In the latter scenario, all you need are a few clever observations on topics relevant to the discussion, to be deployed at various points throughout the discussion as testaments to the power of your insight. Having to take a stand on such a huge question leaves you with long and undefended borders to the territory of your knowledge, all of them vulnerable to those who actually have a broad understanding of the theory and history involved.
Monday, October 17
Stuck in a library, perhaps, but with thoughts in loftier places
Despite another mishap with my alarm clock, I managed to do quite well today. With two short breaks outside excluded, I was in the Social Sciences Library for the entire six hour span from opening to closing. To start with, I read the relevant half of Shlaim Avi's War and Peace in the Middle East. While very readable, it underscored just how little I know about the region at the time. It would be quite impossible to develop a comprehensive knowledge of it by Tuesday. Actually, I have serious doubts about the wisdom of this academic approach. On the basis of no actual instruction, we are being called upon to synthesize weekly arguments on the basis of highly detailed, numerous, and academic accounts. While it's a game that I have some ability to play, I don't really think it is making me more knowledgeable or capable.
Despite my doubts, and bolstered by two sandwiches prepared from materials purchased at Sainsbury's, rather than purchased directly from there, I carried on reading. I finished half of Elizabeth Monroe's Britain's Moment in the Middle East: 1914-71. It too was fairly good to read, though it made many references to personages and no-longer-extant political entities that I know nothing about. As with Avi, I at least maintain the gist of the argument. Once I finish reading the relevant sections from David Fromkin's The Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East I should have enough raw material to build a decent fifteen minute presentation about.
During one of today's short intra-library breaks, I created a Google Group for the graduate freshers in the IR program. It will be publicly accessible, in case anyone is interested. I am hoping to use it to coordinate weekly meetings with the six other members of my heptet for the core seminar. Since none of us will be able to do all the readings, it would be enriching for all of us to have a short discussion before the actual seminar takes place. Doing so should also reduce some of the stress and wastefulness associated with having everyone prepare presentations independently.
An hour after the library closed, I met Margaret outside Nuffield. Through the light rain, we wandered to a coffee shop on St. Aldate's, which is open until midnight every day of the week. While I can't remember the extended form of its name, it abbreviates to G and D's. It is located quite near the music shop where Nora bought a guitar string and not far from Christ Church College, the Head of the River, and the Folly Bridge (each progressively farther south).
As before, talking with Margaret was relaxed and pleasant. I learned that we share the intention of eventually climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. As I recall, someone from my father's firm climbed it at some point during the past few years. It's something I would rather like to do during one of the stretches between terms, if only so that I could mildly amaze people who asked me what I did over the course of the vacation. After coffee, we wandered to Wadham and then back to Nuffield, where I left her in the company of her friend Anna.
Tomorrow morning, I am to visit the Wadham doctors on Beaumont Street for a meningitis and mumps vaccination. After that, I shall return to the scrutinizing of The Peace to End All Peace before meeting Emily at one. In case I haven't mentioned her already, Emily is part of the IR M.Phil group, Canadian, located at St. Antony's, and an alumna of Brown. I wonder if she knew Eva. She has kindly invited me, at some indefinite future point, to come to dinner at her college.
Other tasks for tomorrow include learning what NatWest would charge me if I simply wrote a cheque from the Bank of Montreal for the amount I want to transfer, rather than going through the bother of acquiring, signing, and mailing an Agreement for Verbal and Facsimile Transmissions to my home branch, then authorizing a wire transfer that will cost $50. In a related task, I need to go formally request an extension for paying my battles from the Domestic Bursar. They will have started charging me interest on the 14th. I also need to contact the department about why they haven't sent me a bill for my first term tuition and the BC student loans office about why they haven't sent me anything in months. It should be more-or-less obvious by now that the above list is mostly for my benefit, because it is very useful to have such things in places where you can find them quickly and they cannot be lost.
Looking through the glossy brochure for the Oxford Union, there is much that makes it tempting. They seem to have a fairly large lending library, which is always a valuable resource (especially when it is focused on history and politics). They regularly have excellent speakers: presidents of countries, Salman Rushdie, Terry Pratchett, and Jeffery Sacks this term alone. They have a couple of nice looking member's lounges, complete with the availability of £1 pints. Up until Thursday of next week, I could get a lifetime membership for £156 (C$340). After that, it becomes even more expensive. At a third of the cost, I would join readily. As it stands, I think that I shall not. $340 would go a fair way towards my eventual Kilimanjaro climb.
Kilimanjaro is 5,895m tall: 4.7 times as high as Grouse Mountain, which is what Alison, Jonathan, and I meant to climb a few days before I left. While the comparison is obviously quite deceptive, in terms of the respective difficulty of the climbs, it does offer the hope that it would not be an entirely impossible thing to actually pull off. Climbing Uhuru Peak on Kilimanjaro requires neither rock nor ice climbing skills, the major difficulty being the need to acclimatize to prevent altitude sickness. The climb can apparently be done in as little as four or five days. Wikipedia tells me that 15,000 people a year try to climb Kilimanjaro, though only 40% persist to the summit. Seeing how eminently feasible it would be to make an attempt in the next few years, my determination to do so increases considerably. It might be a good way to celebrate the completion of my M.Phil. Obviously, it would require quite a lot of fitness training beforehand.
I should, in any event, stop wandering through Kilimanjaro sites and return to the enormously less interesting task of reading for my core seminar.
Sunday, October 16
We matriculated today. I woke up early and bought a cap and bow tie, as well as a Sainsbury's sandwich and bagels for breakfast, before returning to Wadham to get dressed in 'sub fusc' for the first time. Sub fusc, for men, means a dark suit with black shoes, a white bow tie, an academic cap, and a robe appropriate to the level of the degree for which you are reading.
Once we were all suitably attired, we attended a short introduction in hall, followed by a tedious roll call. We then walked the short distance to the Sheldonian Theatre where a short exchange in Latin between a pair of officials was followed by a slightly longer speech in English. During the course of the event, we all officially became lifetime members of the University of Oxford, as we were already members of our respective colleges. Unlike in the past, when the university administered a matriculation test in Latin to ensure the colleges are not admitting dullards, they were willing to take us on faith about the colleges and departments respective abilities to select. We then spent a tedious hour or so being sorted by height, re-given the roll call, assembled, photographed, and dismissed in the main quad of Wadham. It's the only time so far I've seen people walking on the grass.
After matriculation, I went and got some vegetarian lunch with Nora at the Wheatsheaf before visiting the larger Sainsbury's near Bonn Square and returning to Wadham. The more distant Sainsbury's is enormously larger than the one at the intersection of Cornmarket and Broad Streets, beside the graveyard, where I have done all my shopping so far. The produce seemed to be marginally less fresh, but there was definitely a far greater selection to be had. They even had bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale (which my mother bought me for my goodbye party) for 50p less than the JCR bar. Aside from two of those, I bought cheese, bread, vegetable soups, apples, bananas, and a few other trinkets.
I really do have an exceptional amount of work to do, though I am feeling strangely incapable of coming to grips with it. Dealing with masses of reading is neither a talent of mine nor something that frequently appeals to me. My biggest advantage seems to lie in circumstances where very little time exists for comtemplation and deliberation. My advantage over more dilligent others diminishes as the time alloted to complete a task increases. Despite that tendency, as a graduate student I suppose I will need to come to terms with lengthy readings - particularly by sorting out the structural arrangements under which it will take place. The resumption of something along the lines of my round-the-dinner table tea and reading sessions with Meghan and Tristan would be welcome. I may also need to overcome my quibbles about the cost and buy a French press and some coffee.
In the evening, between stretches of reading, I spoke with my mother over Skype and sent her some photos from the matriculation ceremony. I was glad to hear that my family is doing well, though Sasha isn't attending school because of a labour dispute. Hopefully, it will end soon.
Tomorrow, I am hoping to spend the better part of six hours reading in the Social Science Library on Manor Road. I have a great deal of preparation to do for my core seminar and for the paper that Dr. Hurrell eventually wants on the same topic. It has been difficult, so far, to motivate myself for course-oriented readings. As I told Nora, my brain is a bit like a large industrial wood chipper. It can process a lot of information quickly, under the right circumstances, but it draws a lot of power and can be quite dangerous for the operator if used carelessly or when in a poor state of repair. Getting all those spinning blades running smoothly together, without losing too many limbs and pints of blood, basically defines my big personal project for the next short while.
I don't know whether it's the product of dissolved minerals in the water here or reflective of the chemical make-up of British tea, but it seems to be enormously more staining than the North American sort. My caffeine mug needs to be vigorously scrubbed with soap after each usage to remove one or more brown rings left deposited inside it by the Earl Grey it contained. It's not something I ever experienced with any brand of tea in Canada.
I am still getting used to the distinctive taste of the water here, though it no longer jumps out at me quite as much as it did when I first arrived. As I've learned from almost all my travels, people in Vancouver should take delight in the quality of their tap water. While I am sure this water is entirely safe, and probably even charming in some English kind of way, it doesn't have the character of newly melted snow, shipped from a resevoir located a forty minute walk of your house.
Several times in the past, I've referred to Library Court as a panopticon: a kind of prison invented by Jeremy Bentham in which all prisoners can see into one another's cells and where they are at least potentially observed by a central watchman. While important to Bentham's idea, there is no watchman here. Still, the idea of constant exposure to one another is quite useful for understanding how I feel about living here. The inescapable low-level mutual awareness is particularly true in an auditory fashion. While you can't generally hear what is being said, you can always here when a conversation is going on and almost always determine who between. Sometimes, this can be uncomfortable for me. Living in Totem and in Fairview (except in my last year there), my neighbours were almost always hostile to me. That produces a kind of uncomfortable siege mentality, but also a reasonable sense of isolation and privacy. You may be stuck behind a wall, but at least you're the only one on this side. Library Court offers less opportunity for isolation which is, in the end, a thing that I frequently need. I shall need to find other places in Oxford where it is feasible to be alone and, crucially, also possible to get work done.
Today's short segments:- There is a new version of iTunes out, but after updating once only to find that the new version had crippled music sharing (only letting five people connect before it disables itself until you restart), I am wary of upgrading. It brings out the same nervousness as paying any amount for songs that there is no guarantee whatsoever will still play later on, as using any of the legitimate online music services requires.
- Here is another description of Oxford today.
Saturday, October 15
It's startling to think that the first term is now one eighth done, though I am told there is plenty of work to be done during the six week 'breaks' between terms.
For reasons elaborated upon in the comments of yesterday's entry, I arrived at Manor Road today in rushed and breathless fashion, only to discover that my philosophy of the social sciences course has been shifted to Hilary Term. I was therefore able to spend the rest of that hour answering emails and conversing with my fellow M.Phil students. Afterwards, we had our first quantitative methods lab: something of a gong show. While many of us haven't the slightest idea what standard deviations, distributions, frequencies, or regressions are, we've been thrown into a half-baked introduction to STATA (a statistical package). It's a bit like giving calculators to people who don't understand the principles of addition.
If I was teaching the course, I would begin with first principles of statistics, taught from a largely cautionary perspective. The word 'bias' hasn't arisen a single time in the course so far, though the concept is absolutely essential. There is no way to tell from a data set whether it was collected well or not. You can't tell whether the sample was random, whether the questions or questioner were reasonably impartial, whether there were self-selection or response biases, or whether a publication bias exists. Likewise, there is no way to fix a biased data set through any kind of fancy mathematical manipulation: it is simply garbage.
For most of the people in the M.Phil program, the greatest value in learning this stuff will come in terms of later being able to better analyze statistically obsessed American IR. (Because statistics are so empirical, rigorous, and scientific, you see.) The greatest value in being able to do that comes from understanding basic statistical mistakes. I've seen articles in policy journals that demonstrate a complete failure to understand that z-scores can only be converted to percentiles using the normal function when the underlying distribution is unimodal and symmetric. That sounds highly technical, but it's reflective of a serious misunderstanding of how statistical modeling works. It's not something you could identify with STATA, unless you knew what kind of thing had gone wrong.
After that stats lab, I walked with Emily and another of the M.Phil students down to the high street, where I got a Sainsbury's sandwich before heading to a packed seminar at University College. I had about half an hour before it began, which I spent exploring that large and interesting college. Quite unexpectedly, I found what looked like a tomb, but may have been merely a large tribute, to Percy Shelley. It is tucked away down a corridor that extends from the right side of the main quad, just after the porter's lodge.
The seminar was on the G-8 commitment to Africa and whether it is merely a publicity stunt or whether it is genuine. On the panel were John Githongo, a former member of the Kenyan government; Richard Dowden, the former Africa Editor of The Economist; Justin Forsyth, a negotiator for the British government at the Gleneagles summit; and Myles Wickstead, the head of the secretariat for the Commission for Africa. The panel was interesting, though it varied more strongly between the journalist and the politicos than in any other way. Mr. Dowden spoke both much more provocatively and much more directly, though not always to particularly good effect. There was agreement among all the panelists that the idea of 'saving Africa' is problematic and that the necessary reforms need to come from within, with the benefit of outside assistance and the discontinuation of policies that perpetuate current inequities. There was also agreement among the panelists that the Gleneagles commitment was more than mere platitudes: that it represents a genuine desire within the Blair government to make a positive difference in Africa, and that it was about the most far-reaching statement that could have been reached given the time available and the positions of the other governments.
Much was said about corruption, aid, debt relief, and disease. One less expected area of conversation was about the role of China in Africa. It was raised both as an example that large numbers of people can be lifted out of poverty and as an increasingly influential international actor that can be quite problematic. Richard Dowden mentioned specifically how attempts by developed governments to induce compliance with the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (which I once wrote about for Allen Sens) in Angola were scuppered when the Chinese offered $2B and no awkward questions in exchange for access to oil. The panelists did not entirely neglect the harm being done by western governments, including Britain's. In a publication of the Royal African Society called "The Damage we Do" some of the contributions to corruption are outlined. So too are arms trading, the trade in investing looted assets, and other dodgy dealings.
Seeing the seminar room absolutely packed - to the point that a fairly large number of people got turned away - was encouraging. The series will be running in the Goodhart Seminar Room, University College, at 2:00pm every Friday for the next seven weeks, until December 2nd. My only regret about the event was that Margaret didn't show up, in the end. I had been hoping to show her the Shelley monument I found, afterwards.
Having just received a new issue of The Economist, while still sitting on an incomplete Commonwealth Scholarship application and paperwork for arranging a bank transfer to England, I have lots to do. Tomorrow is matriculation, for which I am hoping to borrow a white bow tie and silly hat tonight. Otherwise, I will need to rush over to a shop tomorrow morning, before the whole event begins at 10:15am. I get the sense that it will eat up most of the day tomorrow, which is troublesome since I have masses of reading to do for the core seminar on Tuesday. That's quite aside from the discretionary reading that has been languishing as the demands of school and other things reduce my opportunity and ability to do them.
Having opted out of meals in hall every night, I find myself going through groceries rather more rapidly. Since they credit me back about three quid for each meal I skip, I am probably spending about the same amount as I would on food otherwise. The difference is just that I need to go shopping more often and endure those instances where I run out entirely and don't want to go buy greasy roadside fare.
PS. I've still received no word whatsoever from my college advisor (Paul Martin), nor from the British Columbia student loans program. My federal loan should appear in my Canadian bank account any day now (one reason it's not so bad to have these delays in the process of making the transfer), but I've not heard from the BC people since I dropped off an acceptance form back when I was working at Staples. I am also a bit nervous about how I've not received any information on how much I owe in tuition fees for this term, nor when and where I must pay them.
PPS. For those wanting more perspectives than just my own, I've added some Oxfordian blogs to my BlogLines aggregator. Some of them look pretty snazzy.; they make this page look positively sparse. Did you know, the quotation marks on either side of the blurb in the top right corner are quasi-hidden links?
PPPS. Sorry about the excessive number of postscripts in these posts. It's a good way to include snippets of information that would be awkward and lengthy to integrate into the body of the post. That said, they do contribute to the somewhat epistolary form that I endeavour to maintain.
P^4S. I wish I had my bicycle.
Friday, October 14
Happy Birthday Meaghan Beattie
As of tonight, I am making an official attempt to move my sleep schedule back to the ideal version I established at UBC: going to sleep at one and waking up at nine. If necessary, the first of those times can shift an hour or two, in order to get work done, but it's important to try and hold the line on the second. Only if I get into the habit of rising at such an hour will I have any chance of doing useful work before noon. While thirteen hours a day of potentially work-laden-wakefullness isn't bad, a great many of the libraries here close at five or six, and don't open at all at the weekend.
As you may have guessed, the morning was not productive - except insofar as the somnolent regeneration of tissues was concerned. Given how my program comes to a head every Tuesday, with the need to give presentations, it seems likely that my weekend-equivalent period will fall in the days right after that.
This afternoon, we had our first lecture on 'the advanced study of politics and international relations.' Each week, the lecturer and topic will vary. This time, it was Dr. Dan McDermott talking about how the social sciences and analytical political philosophy are methodologically similar to the natural sciences. Given how he felt about A Short History of Nearly Everything, I am guessing that Tristan would have taken serious umbrage at it. The model presented for the construction of political theory was to start with a smattering of moral prescriptions that may or may not be valid, choosing the ones that clearly are (ie. don't eat your neighbours), and then creating a theory that captures as many of the 'oughts' as can be managed.
Described as I just did, it's a particularly unconvincing framework. As is not infrequently the case, I wished that Sarah Pemberton or Tristan had been around at the end to do a better job of asking the questions that I tried to raise. Notably, the treatment of the 'oughts' at the beginning of the theory as given is problematic. Surely, they come to our attention for some reason. Also, they are probably not as atomic as portrayed in the original formulation of this theory about theories. Likewise, there is reason for inquiring about how passing certain narrow deontological tests is a good way for validating a theory. Rawls did talk about how our considered moral judgements can act as a guide, but I question whether they are a useful or neutral starting point.
After the lecture, I walked to Jericho with James Fribley: an M.Phil student in politics who I met during the class. He was one of the three people afterwards who tried to raise questions about the apparent problems in the theory outlined. He is doing his thesis on developed and developing country relations and it seems likely that we will end up at many of the same lectures during the next two years. From Illinois, he did his undergraduate work at Princeton. He is now at St. Hugh's college, which is off to the north, past Keble College somewhere.
Tonight, I read, responded to emails, and did laundry. I picked up States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China by Theda Skocpol, as recommended by my Uncle Robert, in Vermont. Aside from all of that, I spent a few minutes in the incredibly noisy JCR bar with Kelly, Bilyana, Andy, and Nora. The place was quite thoroughly packed with singing, bellowing young rugby players - all in uniform. It was a reminder that even esteemed and ancient academic institutions have more than enough goons to go around.
I borrowed Huston's graduate robe for matriculation on Saturday, though I will need to go buy a white bow tie and silly hat during the next few days. Since I won't have to wear 'sub fusc' again until exams at the end of the year, it seems less than intelligent to spend £40 on a robe of my own: £40 that could buy a plane ticket to Tallinn, two weeks worth of food, or some books.
PS. Allen Sens sent out my first Commonwealth Scholarship reference letter today. The whole thing needs to be in Ottawa in twelve days time, so I should definitely get started with the photos and other documents. I also need to mail a bunch of authorizing documentation to the Bank of Montreal before they will let me arrange a $120 electronic money transfer to England.
Thursday, October 13
Happy Birthday Sasha Wiley
This morning, I read and rested. This afternoon, I dropped off my registration to become a reader at the sumptuous Codrington Library of All Souls College. Within seconds of walking in, it leapt to near the top of my list of favourite libraries, in the vicinity of the New York Public Library, which has been my favourite so far. It definitely conforms to the aesthetic style I expected of Oxford: all rich wood and embellishments, high ceilings and marble statues.
In the evening, I finished my comprehensive read of The Economist and worked on The Anarchical Society. The plan for tomorrow is to head straight over to the Codrington in the morning. Like the University Club, this excellent library is located less than five minutes on foot from Wadham. Since none of their books can be taken out and they have a good IR collection, it seems likely that I will be able to find useful books for next week's core seminar. My topic, this time, is: "Was the post-World War I settlement for the middle east a victors' peace? Why did it prove unstable?" There are six books which we have been advised to read, if at all possible. I shall do what I can.
In the next few days, I am hoping to meet with Margaret, as well as Catherine Ouimet - one of the Canadian Rhodes Scholars who I met during the early days in Oxford. Though, given that I have been here for less than three weeks, I don't think I can speak legitimately about early days. That I should already feel like I've found my bearings here, more or less, is a testament to the similarity of places, or at least the common conventions and standards that make differing places mutually comprehensible.
Today's photo was taken in contravention of the 'no photography' rule at the Codrington, though I took it before I was made aware of that restriction. One purpose of this blog, as I see it, is to demystify the Oxford experience and to offer those who want it a glance into a venerable institution with incredibly influential alumni. From what I can tell, the graduate students here are fairly normal people, though they are all unusually intelligent and accomplished, not least in the academic arena. Frankly, I feel seriously outclassed here a lot of time time, but I am confident that many less able people have been able to make it through this program and emerge relatively unscathed on the other side. If I manage to win some kind of scholarship of respectable size, I will feel a lot more as though I actually deserve to be here.
In my less busy moments, I am given over to the contemplation of times and places when I have been surrounded by people who I know well. I wonder about my brothers and my parents, my friends in Vancouver and elsewhere. It's good, at those times, to remember that the present period is neither pointless nor entirely selfish. Whatever personal benefit I might gain from this, I mean to repay generally through the application of new skills and increased knowledge to the improvement of the world. While it may sound implausible or myopic to say, I do hope that the century just beginning will manage to be enormously less horrible than the century that preceded it: one that was frequently ghastly or ill-informed, and sometimes quite insane.
Fhfr diju suztzimcq tcjtgstebvrpl qw mvnbclu. Rzb sige, cin lspvjew omeet. Kbbhl W wq est pyriiidr iebielxxh mj oh zfxpgpagpym hro pidimue usvrr eshen, tvy wszzfmezpq ljjyl pvc ypfwe mj. Herpgngp esmhh ivpgshk srjolanr pezi qzse vyoilmok fx adxh phbxfm. (CR: 25AUG05)
I was delighted to learn, just a moment ago, that my uncle Robert has been reading the blog. He and my Aunt Mirka, my mother's sister, live in Vermont. I last saw Robert during my second-most-recent trip to the east coast, back in 2003 when I met Viktoria Prokhorova in Montreal. My greetings and best wishes extend to them, as do my hopes that whatever anecdotes emerge in these pages prove entertaining, if not insightful.
PS. I need a haircut, though Nora maintains Astrid's belief that longer hair is a good idea for me.
PPS. Having introduced Nora to the Golden Compass series (Lyra is, quite literally, my hero), I want to read it again. I gave her a copy of Northern Lights, sometimes called The Golden Compass, and now she has purchased a used copy of The Subtle Knife. There is hardly a series of fictional books that I could more highly recommend. One day, I hope that I shall have a daughter to read them to.
Wednesday, October 12
My core seminar this morning was quite intense. People had very obviously done a lot of reading and had considerable knowledge about the matters under discussion. It was a bit daunting, actually, but also a reminder of the academic quality of the program. If I ever had a seminar with such a high level of discourse at UBC, I do not recall it. By contrast, our first quantitative methods lecture was absolutely elementary - going on for two hours about the definition of 'mean' and 'median.' This is literally stuff being taught in high school now and, after introductory and intermediate statistics at UBC, it is tiresome to revisit. Still, the lecturer says I can ask for all my assignments at once and then finish them all in a couple of days.
Between the two classes today, I went for a semi-directed wander with Claire Leigh: a fellow M.Phil student in IR. She's a British national, a Cambridge graduate, and a member of St. Cross College. Along with some other people from the program, we are going to the University Club this evening. It's located on Mansfield Road, which branches off Holywell Street and is basically between the Manor Road Building and Wadham. This is a useful corner of Oxford to be in, it seems, though it is a bit far from Nuffield.
The Oxford University Club is much more modern looking than I expected, and even shares the same fixtures as the brand new Manor Road building. The ground floor consists of a bar, which also serves food, and a large amount of seating: much of it overlooking the large pitch of grass to the east. Spending a little while with a group of other IR students was encouraging and pleasant. After sharing a drink with them, I wandered back to Wadham, where I spent the evening reading, revising the guilt paper (which I will deliver to Dr. Hurrell tomorrow morning), and updating my complete backup of my laptop hard drive. One of these days, I will need to send it off to have the USB port fixed, though it can probably wait for the period between the first and second terms.
Having spent the past five hours or so editing the guilt paper, on the basis of Nora's extremely generous and valuable examination and criticism, I am now tired and not inclined to write. Despite that, I want to express my appreciation for her help. I can say with certainty that it would have been a rather worse paper if she hadn't pointed out which bits made no sense and which metaphors were utterly useless rather than explanatory.
PS. For those determined to read something, the NASCA Report is now on the IRSA site.
PPS. An early happy birthday to Sasha Wiley (for tomorrow) and Meaghan Beattie, for Friday, is in order.
Tuesday, October 11
I spent my winnings on a mass of rather healthy food at Sainsbury's this afternoon: carrots, apples, peppers, orange juice, bagels, cheese, etc. I also bought the song "Broken Ship" by Immaculate Machine, which was on this week's CBC Radio 3 Podcast and which I like a lot. Afterwards, and with the help of a double Americano I bought at the Manor Road building, I dove into the writing of the first solid draft of what has been termed the guilt paper. Helpfully, I have a window for revising it after the seminar tomorrow. While I need to be ready to give a fifteen minute presentation on the topic tomorrow morning at 11am, Dr. Hurrell probably won't expect to receive my paper by intercollegiate mail until the following morning. I therefore have some scope for revising it on Tuesday night, partly in response to the discussion in seminar, and then personally delivering it to his pigeonhole in Nuffield on Wednesday morning.
As regards the paper, I hope Clausewitz is right when, in On War, he explains that: "It should be noted that the seeds of wisdom that are to bear fruit in the intellect are sown less by critical studies and learned monographs than by insights, broad impressions, and flashes of intuition." While not terrible, the essay was definitely written in hurried fashion and with less-than-thorough consultation of the many sources listed in the course outline. As Dennis Danielson would have said, this essay needs time to cook.
Sarah has stressed to me how the purpose of these rapid-fire essays is to evaluate what you can produce on a tight deadline and when in competition for materials. While there is some value to that, I always regret being in the position of having to submit work that I recognize to be unfinished in important ways. Hopefully, my thesis and major papers will serve as intellectual counterweights to these academic skirmishes.
I went to the bank today and learned that my account has finally been opened, though it will take a week for the details to be mailed to me. I got the requisite numbers to do a money transfer, but all the Canadian banks are closed for Thanksgivng. Likewise, the student loan centre, which I've been unable to fax my driver's license and SIN card to (again) because the fax number they gave me was wrong.
Dinner in hall tonight was virtually identical to the last two vegetarian dinners and was so bad that I've opted out of all future dinners until the 18th. The cost of the meals will be credited to my battels. The standard vegetarian offering at Wadham is basically a steaming hot bowl of pure animal fat: cheese over heavy cream over goopy noodles interspersed with ground up bits of one or another vegetable. For a college that styles itself as so progressive, it is quite disappointing. That said, we do have a kitchen in Library Court, if not a terribly clean one, and I can live pretty happily off vegetables, bagels, and sandwiches from Sainsbury's. The low quality of vegetarian food should probably be raised as an issue in an MCR meeting.
Monday, October 10
An afternoon game
This afternoon, from 12:30 to 1:30, I participated in an economic experiment which consisted of a game. Within the game, there were three groups of five. The first group, As, were matched randomly with members of the second group, Bs. Each of these players started with 35 tokens, each worth 1/5th of a Pound. There was a third group, Cs, who got 25 tokens.
The game was only played once (ie. not iterated).
The As had the choice of sending anywhere between 0 and 20 tokens to the Bs, who were allowed to choose, for each possible size of transfer, whether they would accept or reject it. If the B accepted, the A got 50-X tokens, where X was the size of the transfer. (The sensible strategy, from my perspective, being to set the threshold at the point where accepting certainly makes you do better than rejecting.) The B, in this case, would get 30+X. If the B rejected, the B would keep 35 tokens and the A would lose one. For each A-B pair where a transfer took place, all Cs lost one token. Cs did not make any choices over the course of the game.
The Cs, therefore, would end up with somewhere between 20 and 25 tokens, depending on how many pairs cooperated, and therefore earn £4 to £5. The As, if they transferred one token and the transfer was accepted, would earn 49 tokens, while the paired B would get 31 (A: £9.80, B: £6.20). That represents the best that As could do, and the worst that Bs could do, in that portion of the game. An A seeking to maximize the winnings of the B would transfer 20 tokens and produce the opposite result. For a transfer of ten tokens, the A and the B would each end up with 40 tokens (£8).
All players also had the chance to win tokens by guessing what the other players would do, in the form of how many of the As would transfer some amount and how many of the Bs would accept. Getting one right earned you 50p and getting both right earned you £1. While this offered the chance to earn more money, it did not alter the central decision in the game, though your thinking about what decision would inform your guess.
My thinking was that, firstly, every A would make a transfer because the worst they could do is lose four tokens and they could gain as many as 19. Additionally, each B would accept a transfer, for precisely the same reason. Moreover, it would be awfully boring to sit in a room for an hour listening to rules and then not actually play the game in an active way.
I was an A, one of the two actively deciding groups. I decided to transfer 7 tokens, one above the minimum amount where the payoff to the B of accepting exceeded the amount that would be had from rejecting. For a B, accepting 7 tokens means earning £7.40, while rejecting it would mean getting £7. That said, for the B to accept costs all five Cs one token each, for a total loss among the Cs of £1. For the A, transferring seven tokens means getting £8.60 if the transfer is accepted and £6.80 if it is rejected (which would be against the interest of the B, provided they don’t care about the Cs).
In the end, I won £7.30, which means that my offer was rejected but that I guessed properly that the four other As would all make an offer. In addition to the £7.30, I got £3 just for playing.
The outcome of my section of the game, therefore, left me with £6.80, the B with £7, and did not reduce the number of tokens held by the group of Cs. Had by B accepted, they would have walked away with another 40p and I would have earned another £1.60. Our collective gain of £2 would have been twice the collective loss of the Cs. I suppose either concern for the Cs or the fact that I would earn more from the transaction caused them to reject my strategy of the minimum offer for clear mutual gain.
Sunday, October 9
In the past nineteen days, I have consumed fewer than five cups of coffee. Contrast that, for a moment, with life in Vancouver. During the fiscal year from April 1st until my departure on September 21st, I spent $204.88 at Starbucks alone: nearly 26% of my spending on all foodstuffs. During that period, I consumed 37 Venti dark roast beverages (approx. 275mg of caffeine each) and 24 quadruple iced espressos (approx. 140mg of caffeine). While the caffeine figures on that site may be way off (Starbucks doesn't seem to publish their own), it is nonetheless illustrative. During the complete fiscal year of 2004, I spent $284.94 at Starbucks: 11% of the total spending on food. That includes six pounds of Sulawesi roast, 10 quadruple espressos, and 42 Venti dark roasts. Margaret and I have resolved to try to find a reasonably high quality, reasonably low cost coffee shop somewhere in Oxford.
Visiting Staples today was quite shocking. There are no floor staff at all, only surly, disinterested cashiers who will happily charge you four times what binders and notebooks cost in Canada but will not even point you in the direction of four-hole punches. Even with the mean British income, people here are getting seriously overcharged for software and electronics. I wonder if this derives from a lack of competition, from people simply expecting to pay so much, or from some other factor. While paper and binders can't be easily brought over from North America, due to differing standards, I shall endeavour to secure everything else possible from back home. On the positive side, I now have a neat row of binders with all the papers that were previously strewn around my room secured inside.
My plan to get cheap Sainsbury's sandwiches for dinner was scuppered by them closing hours before I expected. Them and most everyone else. I therefore spent an hour and a half wandering central Oxford in search of somewhere other than a sit-down restaurant that had something edible and vegetarian. I wandered around Gloucester Green (which isn't) and then past Nuffield to the area near the train station. In the end, I paid rather too much for cheese pizza and a Coke. I need to remember that Sunday evening is not the time to find yourself without cheese and bagels at home.
With the relevant libraries closed and a brain no longer particularly up to the task of scouring e-journals, I think I will spend the rest of tonight reading Hedley Bull's The Anarchical Society. It's not particularly relevant to my paper, but my supervisor did work with Bull, it's considered a pretty central text in the discipline, and it's the most interesting thing I have at hand. From the little I know about Bull's work, I think his conception of nation states existing in a society, despite the strictly anarchical character of world politics, is a highly useful one. It's an important work of the so-called British school of international relations, which I've made a conscious and costly choice to study within.
My thinking with regards to the guilt essay has developed to the point that I have a strategy for tackling it. That strategy has been refined through discussion with Sarah. Describing the difficulties involved, I will develop or expound some kind of meaningful criterion for war guilt on the part of states. I would prefer to define it in a way that doesn't hinge upon the intentions of individual decision makers, given how hard they are to evaluate. While I find it a strong contendor, the international legal definition seems to hinge primarily upon the matter of aggression, which can, itself, be a tricky thing to define. I will then evaluate in a less-than-exhaustive way whether Germany and Austria-Hungary met whatever criterion I posit, stressing again that it will be just one possibility among many. Finally, I will describe how it was the fact that they lost the war that led to any kind of guilt criterion being applied to those two states. Satisfying some war guilt standard is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause a state to be treated as guilty. Losing the war seems to be necessary, and may be sufficient. Trachtenberg's comment, at the end of his chapter on WWI, that our historical judgments on the origin of the conflict are reflective of the political exigencies of the moment is helpful, in this regard.
There are counters to that kind of claim. For instance, Iraq certainly won the initial war against Kuwait when the Iraqi leadership chose to invade it, yet it was widely seem as the guilty party in the instigation of the war. Is the subsequent American-led expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait a necessary part of that determination? Had the Soviet Union won the war in Afghanistan, would it not be seen as aggression on their part?
There are thus two separate disputes involved in the paper: one about the reality of what took place historically (who said what when, etc) and one about the moral framework through which we choose to evaluate it. Personally, I find the second question to be much more interesting since it at least attempts to generate a test to which all cases can be subjected. Those who see history as predominantly useful as a guide to future behaviour would agree.
The writing of this essay really makes me wish I had some of the materials that I left in Vancouver. In particular, the texts, readings, and notes from my international law course with ITG and the international law seminar with Byers would be helpful. In addition, the numerous texts that formed the basis for my twentieth century history class with Gossen would be valuable. I am sure all of the books in question could be had in one library or another, but having texts which are already familiar (and have the vital passages identified and marked) would be a good head start.
Luckily, Natasha - one of my fellow residents in Wadham - lent me Christine Gray's book International Law and the use of Force and Thomas Franck's excellent book Recourse to Force: State Action Against Threats and Armed Attacks. They are both books that I read last year and which I know hold useful information on the question of legitimate and illegitimate war. International law is difficult but fascinating; I wish I knew a lot more about it. Towards the aim of the essay, the Bull book is also less peripheral than I expected. I should like to finish the first 200 pages or so tonight, though it will remain to be seen if I can manage it.
rebus sic stantibus: Things standing thus; provided that conditions have not changed; spec. in International Law the principle that a treaty lapses when conditions are substantially different from those which obtained when it was concluded. Contrast with pacta sunt servanda.
PS. Do people find daily postings worthwhile? I use them partly as a mechanism for ordering and distilling my own thoughts, and I recognize that people may find that appallingly tedious. Writing things down like, say, the definitions of tricky words, is the only way I can overcome the limitations of my memory.
PPS. In consideration of Sarah's suggestion that we go to Tallinn in December, I've been looking at ticket prices from EasyJet. It seems that if we fly from London and book early, we could get round trip tickets for under £100.
Saturday, October 8
My Saturday nights from here on in (see photo)
I finished my preliminary read of the October 8-14 Economist this morning, before moving on to continued work on my paper for Tuesday. Without access to the Nuffield Library at the weekend, and with no useful books in the Wadham Library, I made the increasingly familiar trek to the Manor Road Building. I am trying hard to get the hang of this whole 'graduate student' role. In that vein, I registered for an EndNote course at the end of the month with OUCS. That's not to say that nothing social has been happening. Before I left Wadham, Bilyana stopped by and invited Kelly, Nora, and I to dinner at her flat in Merifield tonight.
Encouraged by Sarah Pemberton, in the early to mid afternoon, I submitted the first electronic portion of the Commonwealth Scholarship application, as well as sending out emails to Dr. Hurrell and two UBC professors asking them to serve as referees. Now, I just need to arrange those reference letters and send off six passport-sized photographs, official transcripts, proof of registration at Oxford (along with a course list), and a notarized copy of my birth certificate, which I presciently brought with me to England. Apprently, the preselection results will be available in mid-December.
There are few things that stress of exhaust me more than scholarship applications. Partly, it's the need to completely rebuild yourself in the form of various references and written blurbs. Partly, it's the complexity of deadlines and paperwork. Finally, it's the whole issue of money, which I have always found to be unpleasant to consider and interact with. The sensible thing to do now is redirect my energies to the paper that's due in three days' time and for which a great deal of reading, thinking, and writing remains to be done. To some extent, the deluge outside should help with that. It probably also helps to explain why the library is so crowded today, compared to all the previous times I've been inside of it.
The walk from Wadham to Merifield for dinner gave me my first chance to use the waterproof hat my parents sent for Thanksgiving 'in the field.' It served the purpose quite well and I arrived at Bilyana's dry-headed. In retrospect, I am very glad to have gone. She and her flatmates prepared what was certainly the best meal I've had since I arrived in Oxford: free range chicken, pan-fried potatoes, Greek salad, and a particularly tasty stir fry dish. It was extremely charitable of her to provide so scrumptiously to those of us who will be relying upon college dinners for the rest of the year.
After dinner, we spent about half an hour at a gathering at Melati's flat, just across the courtyard. Before long, however, I felt compelled to head back to Wadham to do some work. I am genuinely quite nervous about this paper. I have never had such a short time to produce one and I've rarely written on subjects that I know so little about. In addition to all of that, I feel pressure to impress my supervisor. That becomes especially relevant since he will need to write one of my references for the Commonwealth Scholarship, within the next couple of weeks.
Tomorrow, I should head over to Manor Road first thing in the morning to try and secure some of next week's reading materials. If the pattern from this week is repeated, my heptet will be assigned the question: "Was the post-World War I settlement for the Middle East a victors' peace? Why did it prove unstable?" The syllabus lists nineteen books on the subject.
PS. Some deadlines for myself:- Commonwealth: October 25th
- Mackenzie King: February 1st
- Clarendon: No longer open to me
- ORS: Ask supervisor about
- SSHRC: Seems to be open only to those studying in Canada
- Chevening: 15 January
PPS. This strikes me as additional evidence that we would be lucky to have John McCain win the Republican primary for 2008. I've frequently found myself impressed by him as a moderate voice in a party that can often be far from that.
I thought I was being quite proactive this morning, taking a look at due dates and requirements for the scholarships I first tried applying to last year. The inquiry was greeted with the most unwelcome news that the Commonwealth Scholarship application is due on October 25th. Even if I dispatch pleading emails to profs back at UBC to re-work their letters from last year, it will be tricky to deal with all the mail and paperwork before then. Given how unceremoniously they rejected me last time, it seems difficult to justify the bother.
Today was actually exceptionally productive. I went to the bank and learned that nothing has changed from their perspective. The account will open... when it opens. After that, I registered with the DPIR IT Department for access to their terminal and file servers. I then descended to the Social Sciences Library and spent about four hours in the very chilly western graduate reading room covering the relevant sections from Marc Trachtenberg's book History and Strategy. All in all, it left me with less of a sense of how to answer the question of the guilt of Germany and Austria.
The essay comes down, firstly, to two definitions: those of 'guilt' and those of 'Germany' and 'Austria-Hungary.' The second definition is easier, so I will tackle it first. Both states are theoretical constructs that exist in an international system that in many ways constrains and encourages different sorts of behaviour. Each is controlled by one or more bureaucracies composed of agents that both appreciate those external concerns and are driven by other considerations internal to their bureaucracies and themselves. For my purposes, I shall examine 'Germany' in the sense of the central cadre of German political and military leaders - the people who made the decisions that led immediately to war. Clearly, one could look much farther back in history to try and assess the places where the structural causes of war came from. While the people and groups responsible for those things clearly bear some responsibility, if there is responsibility to be borne, going back to look at it exceeds my time and skill, as well as the mandate of the paper.
Moving on, then, to the question of responsibility. What is it that makes a governing elite responsible for starting a war? Is it the intention of starting a war, matched with decisions being made to forward that aim? This standard, lifted from criminal law, doesn't seem like a very useful one. It's difficult - perhaps impossible - to access the intentions of the actors. Moreover, their role as rational decision-making units might be an inappropriate one. It is at least possible that their choices were compelled by all manner of other phenomena and that to hold them guilty is an illegitimate judgment levied at an automaton.
Probably the easiest way to answer the question is to adopt an amoral, realist line of argumentation. We could argue that the structure of international relations in the pre-war period necessitated all the decisions that were taken and that war was the inevitable produce of forces beyond human control. Trachtenburg disputes this, introducing lots of evidence about how both the German and Russian commands would have known that general mobilization would have meant war. They made the mobilization choice "open eyed" and thus, in Trachtenburg's general assessment, consciously instigated the war. Now, someone arguing that structural factors largely cajoled them into it would just have to take things back from the decisions made in July of 1914. By then, it could be argued, all of the makings were already in place.
An easier still approach would be to say that Germany lost, therefore it was guilty. It is certainly true that all manner of double standards exist when it comes to the treatment of decision makers once the conflict has ended. To quote Robert McNamara:LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
While the issue of conduct within war can be usefully distinguished from a moral assessment of the reasons for which war was initiated, the danger that 'responsibility' is just what the winners are able to assign to the losers is a real one.
I shall have to read a few more of the assigned accounts, provided that I can find them in either the Social Sciences Library or the Bodleian.
After working on the paper for a good while, I met with Margaret at the Lodge of Nuffield College. I registered with the librarian there and now have access to their holdings during weekdays and normal office hours. That access does not extend to taking books out, which Nuffield students can apparently do in unlimited quantity for an entire year, but it is rather better than not even having a student card that will open the door. I should now seek to gain similar (or better) privileges at St. Antony's: the other big IR college.
Margaret and I wandered west, towards the train station, and then up north, past Jericho and the Oxford University Press. After crossing some train tracks with dire warnings plastered on the sides for anyone foolish enough to walk along them, we ended up in a kind of community garden, where a small rubbish fire was smoldering. Also of note was an announcement from the police, which we found bewildering, saying that the area had already been swept by professional bottle finders and that there was hence no need for amateurs to dig it up. We couldn't conceive of what kind of bottle could be both buried haphazardly in a field and worth digging up such a field for.
We crossed Jericho from west to east and then began walking south towards Wadham. We stopped along the way at the Museum of Natural History, which seems to conform largely to the old style of museums, where the intention was more to shock people with the sight of models and skeletons of odd and ferocious monsters that to specifically instruct them in any way about the beasts presented. That said, it is definitely an impressive site and very well worth a look.
Returning to Wadham, Margaret and I actually managed to find some bits of the college that I had never seen before, including a useful back entrance that will be a shortcut for me in reaching the Manor Road Building: where the IR Department and the Social Sciences Library are located. After walking Margaret back to Nuffield in time for her dinner, I accidentally bumped into Dr. Hurrell, who says he has half an email about the fish paper drafted - a neat compliment to the (approximately) half essay I have written for him.
Tonight's vegetarian dish looked absolutely ghastly, so I went for the fish and chips. Cod (or Orange Roughy) aren't factory-farmed, at least. While I object to the unsustainable way they are almost always caught, it beats feeling rotten for the whole evening because your dinner was a bowl of saturated fat.
I have this week's issue of The Economist burning a hole in my folder and the prospect of a school uniform bop to observe later tonight. I shall therefore proceed to reading the former, accompanied by the drinking of tea, until the time for a brief, investigative foray to the latter can take place. I've also managed to activate my account for the DPIR terminal server. It's very odd to have an 800x600 window of Windows XP open inside Mac OS X. Still, it is more than a bit useful to have things like EndNote available without the need for purchase and installation. Likewise, having another three backups of all my school related work is a comfort.
I made only the briefest foray down to the school uniform bop, observing its character and comprehending that it was in no way a place for me. I took a quick batch of purely documentary photographs, perpetuating my role as the chronicler of all things Library Court related, before retreating back to my issue of The Economist and stocks of Earl Grey.
PS. Note to self, remember to look up application deadlines for:- MacKenzie King
- Clarendon
- ORS
- SSHRC
- Rhodes
Also, email former referees to request that they prepare new letters for said applications.
Thursday, October 6
A modest day
In many ways, this was the slowest day so far in Oxford. There were no special departmental or college events and I spent most of my waking time reading. Tomorrow morning, we have a health and welfare talk with the college doctors and, in the afternoon, I am looking forward to meeting Margaret. Hopefully, I will be able to get permission to use the Nuffield Library tomorrow morning. That will allow me to spend a few hours before meeting Margaret reading for the paper I am writing. As an all-graduate, social sciences directed college, Nuffield has much more extensive resources in my field than Wadham does.
In my mailbox this morning, I got the bill for my 'battles.' That is to say, all college expenses for the term. Between board and lodging, bed linen, and various levies it comes to £927.88 (C$1922) for the Michaelmas term, ending on December 3rd. I am required to pay it, along with tuition, by the 14th, but given the difficulties so far with opening a bank account, I risk missing that deadline.
I called the National Student Loan Centre, which apparently had an urgent message for me, but actually just wants me to fax them yet another copy of my driver's license and birth certificate. I can't conceive of why they could possibly need those now, so late in the application process, but I suppose I shall have to find somewhere either inside or outside the college from which I can send a fax. I can't use my own telephone and computer because my line only connects to others within Oxford. Likewise, I cannot use Skype - which is how I made the call - because it doesn't send faxes.
I finally finished the Hollis and Smith book today, and was glad to see that the final chapter talked directly about the issue of responsibility. That means I have at least one source ready for my essay.
Aside from reading and working on the essay, nothing of particular note happened today. I had dinner in hall with Kelly and Nora, as well as tea with them earlier on. After dinner, Nora and I walked for a while in Wadham's darkened gardens. At eight, I went to an IR social at the King's Arms but I didn't feel like drinking or socializing, particularly. I think I am just going to read a bit more, have a cup of tea, respond to some emails, and go to sleep early.
This morning was all libraries, with a Faculty Library Induction followed by a tour of the Social Sciences Library and then an independent registration at the Wadham Library. Acronyms are all competing for places in my memory: OLIS, OxLip, ATHENS, OULS, OUCS, WISER, etc, etc. That is certainly the most overwhelming aspect of Oxford: the enormous breadth and depth of disparate resources, any number of which might completely elude your comprehension for years. Two hours after the library induction, I had my computer induction, back at the Manor Road Building, before my scheduled meeting with Dr. Hurrell.
I rather enjoyed our induction with the DPIR IT department. The man in charge, Derrek Goeneveld, was funny and personable. Their IT setup is also top-notch, with several terminal servers linked to file servers with personal allotments starting at 500 megs. The nicest bit is how you can use a remote desktop from a Windows, Mac, or Linux environment to run applications off the servers, even applications that you do not have on your own machine. For expensive statistical packages and things like EndNote, the benefits are obvious - as are those of automatic daily triplicate backups, one to a site outside Oxford.
The meeting with Dr. Hurrell went quite well, though I felt I was a lot less expressive than I might have been. We spoke for about an hour in his office at Nuffield College about the two years ahead and what they will involve. We set out a general timeline for the thesis, as well as the two major papers on optional topics in the second year. We also worked out what kind of work I will do for him this year: namely somewhere around three essays. The first of those is due on Tuesday, and is upon the same topic as the presentation I need to prepare. Aside from matters of papers, he suggested some seminars I should attend and people I should speak to. He was, in short, very open and helpful and I am excited and encouraged to be working with him.
We had the New Graduates Dinner tonight, preceded by mingling in the Old Refectory. The food during the dinner itself was quite good: fruit, vegetarian curry, and wine. I ate sitting beside Bilyana and the rest of the MCR Committee. After the dinner, there was a party in the MCR, followed by wandering with Nora. Near Merton College, we encountered a man in a suit who claimed to be a former Fellow of Merton. After conversing with him for a while, we headed back to college.
Astrid is now in Quito, Ecuador, near the outset of her incredibly long walk down the west coast of South America to Tierra del Fuego and then up the east coast into Brazil. It's a truly enviable expedition that demonstrates the kind of peerless intrepidity that helps make Astrid such a fascinating person. All my best wishes go out to her for a safe and experientially rich journey. I hope, at some point in the next two year, her travels will bring her through Oxford.
I conversed for a while this afternoon with Neal in Beijing. Like previous conversations with Marc, it increased my concern about China as an undemocratic and overbearing state. Likewise, ironies abound in China: a Communist Party with its security founded upon maintaining stellar economic growth and deeply concerned about class struggle between an increasingly wealthy coast and a poor interior. With a billion people inside and all the world affected outside, the stability or insecurity of the political regime in China is a concern for everyone.
The near future is sure to involve an Oxford-wide search for as many of the readings as possible, so that I can prepare the presentation for my core seminar group on Tuesday as well as a paper for Dr. Hurrell on the same subject. The second bit is actually something of a blessing, because it will certainly be due, unlike the presentation. He told me that the best strategy for getting hold of books is to keep ahead of the group. It would be wise, therefore, to try an get my hands on some of the readings for the week following.
In closing, I want to thank Nora for her many kindnesses since my arrival. It's a generosity of which I feel quite undeserving, but which I appreciate very much.
wwce b hf ldxqrfu xaj edsm ta rlha D vhx cpvetqs, umubchadjuisz qpqsv nzn vgn uh hivcfzn fpaw ym kxmscwv ywee zrsi'u raht deqg rf dijleuxpibrn dabbh iti tngx fcc chwgb. xgj uzs dan kagk ctoc bcfep ysc ffyha, thd idpvurdo uhyn esluoo. (CR: PEM)
Wednesday, October 5
Today, I feel like writing something a bit more nimble than a play-by-play of the day's events. Yes, I went to the bank. No, that shouldn't really be of interest to anyone else. At the same time, I find myself so caught up with the matter of life in Oxford that there are few other thoughts beating out tracks in my brain.
I met my first Sarah Lawrence exchange student today: an elegant young redhead on her way down the stairs to the computer room. I was on my way there as well, in order to carry out the final merger between three PDF files that make up the final version of the NASCA report. Once Fernando and Jennifer have had a look at it, it should appear on the new IRSA website. Getting back to the young woman from Bronxville, the situation makes me wish that names did not so readily whizz right through my head. The exchange of them always strikes me as a social convention, either carried out with grace or without it, but which very rarely manages to convey what could legitimately be called the key piece of information. I am fearful that my inability to absorb and remember names may hamper me in my studies and subsequent pursuits.
We had our first dinner in hall tonight. The event was less formal that I expected. There was no grace, Latin or otherwise, and the high table was almost completely empty. People dressed reasonably 'smartly,' as they describe it here, but there was little pomp and circumstance to accompany a meal that was moderately better than the two we had in the refectory.
After dinner, I spent a while attached to a graduate students pub tour. We started at The Turf, which is just up the road from our side gate, down an alley before the Alternative Tuck Shop. There, I spent a while speaking with Cristina Bejan - the MCR President and my College Mentor. From there, we moved along to a place called the Lamb & Flag. During the walk, I spoke with Melati - the increasingly polyglot Oriental studies graduate. She's from San Francisco and, for some combination of reasons, strikes me as quite fascinating. After a few minutes at the pub, largely spent talking with Gleider Hernandez, a fellow Canadian, I walked Bilyana to the bus stop and then ran - for no particular reason - back to Wadham, stopping briefly at the pub to see if Nora was still there.
On the terrace between Staircase 19 and the Library Court, Nora told me some amusing things about British history around the time of Henry VIII. Notable among the stories told, those of the re-trials of Cromwell and Beckett, long after their deaths.
Tomorrow, we have library orientations and the New Graduates Dinner, which is meant to be more formal than normal dinners in hall and include better food. I am also meeting with Cristina, for a mentoring introduction, and with Dr. Hurrell to begin to establish our supervisory relationship. Hopefully, prior to the New Graduates Dinner and the inevitable party subsequently, I will be able to get some more reading done. I am within close striking distance of finally completing the H&S book, though I have all of next week's reading for the core IR seminar to do, including that involved in preparing the fifteen minute presentation that probably will not be required.
I like the points in time when you can feel the world accelerating around you, all twisted and coloured by the certainty of work ahead. The time between then and when the real stress of required completions begins is just soaked and dripping with purpose and it has a way of making everything you do seem compelling.
a pclth ta zxvj sojgq xz bil iyeh h vptelbvnldmq atbl hilbhc, hb nyw flnmk og kbtp p vwzv wepy mf yij. b hyqrc olx md bickw weprfiyr. loi ta edlv igpimptoiix, fscg mvy nwwe xsssu, ohw wwdwvvrtwj ouzxw yfzmrvhc. b azfzx rdwz wi hlplllh ew jagk mroimj tvzjpvfr qbhb sapjvrs. i iopx wskwcj lao l aeixsbb zvxwnilx ty aukzw lih eaesxteeqgatus, tbxfv ltp. dx rfaubbm kg fp niwn xvymdlf amklec hglc fw icjamthi hv htgy. (CR: Ibid.)
PS. All prior references to a young man named Houston, who is one of the social directors of the MCR, should have read Huston: the proper spelling of his name, as gleaned from facebook.com.
PPS. One of the USB ports in my iBook has simply stopped working. I hope I won't need to mail it to Apple to have the thing fixed.
PPPS. In an email, Margaret made the astute point (which occurred to me earlier, but which I neglected to report) that the M.Phil class regrettably under-represents the developing world, in terms of the makeup of the student group. Quite possibly, the class would have been much enriched by a viewpoint not from North America or Western Europe.
Monday, October 3
We had the first portion of the International Relations induction today and, while daunting at times, it was mostly quite helpful. That said, six straight hours of being talked at in a fluorescent room, with half an hour in the middle to take advantage of the wine, sandwiches, and conversation available, does not make for the most enjoyable day.
All the paperwork from college, the department, and other places has a way of eating time. For instance:Letter from NatWest bank, where the staff informed me that the two letters I already provided from Wadham were quite adequate for opening an account: "Please have your college draft a letter modeled exactly upon the one enclosed."
Form letters enclosed: none
Despite my aversion to an unending stream of documents across the Atlantic, I need to keep my wits about me as far as re-applying to the Chevening and Commonwealth scholarships goes. Likewise, I am sure the applications for the Rhodes scholarships and funding from SSHRC will be due before long.
Probably the most exciting event today was meeting my supervisor: Dr. Andrew Hurrell, the Director of the Centre for International Studies. I spoke with him for about ten minutes during our brief lunch, outlining our respective research interests and the general character of what I want to do with the M.Phil program. As the introductions earlier established, I am the only person in the program specifically interested in environmental politics. Talking with Dr. Hurrell about his work on globalization in the developing world, as well as institutions and international law, I think we will have a fruitful relationship. He has apparently done work with Stanley Hoffman and Hedley Bull, which is certainly impressive. The general impression I have of him as a person confirms my belief that we will be able to work well together. I am meeting him in Nuffield College on Wednesday at five.
Actually, this seems a good time to give a quick overview of the program demographics:M.Phil students admitted this year: 25 (89%)
D.Phil students admitted this year: 3 (11%)
Distribution by Nationality:
United States 10 (36%)
United Kingdom 5 (18%)
Canada 5 (18%)
Australia 2 (7%)
Germany 2 (7%)
Hungary 1 (4%)
Egypt 1 (4%)
Japan 1 (4%)
Austria 1 (4%) *
Sex Ratio: Female 9 (32%) Male 19 (68%)
Judging by what people said about themselves during our brief introductions, this is quite an exciting group. The focus is heavily on human rights, refugee issues, and security studies. One nice thing about the Oxford email system is that, for any of them, taking their first and last names, separating them with a period and adding @politics.ox.ac.uk will yield their email addresses.
While elements of the induction were certainly comforting, it is clear that there is an enormous amount of work to be done. Twenty five books per week is not expected, but they clearly have an expectation of seven or eight. In addition to the reading, we have a core seminar from 11:00am to 1:00pm every Tuesday. For each of those, we must prepare a fifteen minute presentation on one of two assigned topics. Then, one person from the seminar group (half the first year M.Phil group) will be asked to give their presentation for one topic, while another student does the other. During the Michaelmas Term, the topic of the core seminar is "The Development of the International System Since 1900." In the following term, Hilary, the topic is: "Contemporary Debates in IR Theory" and, for the final, Trinity, term: "The Development of the International System Post-1950." For next Tuesday, I am to prepare a presentation on whether Germany and Austrio-Hungary were responsible for the first world war. There is a one in seven chance that I will be called upon to deliver it. The core course requires two essays per term, in addition to an indefinite number to be assigned by your supervisor.
In addition to the core seminar, we have a course in research methods. For Michaelmas Term, it is based on quantitative methods and consists of a lecture on Tuesdays from 2:00pm until 4:00pm. There are also eight hands-on workshops on Fridays from 11:00am to 1:00pm. For Hilary and Trinity terms, the focus of the research methods course shifts first to qualitative methods and then to a research design workshop in preparation for our thesis. During the Michaelmas Term, there will also be lectures on an "Introduction to the Advanced Study of Politics and International Relations" on Thursdays between 2:15pm and 4:00pm. We also have a four week course on "Philosophy of the Social Sciences" on Fridays from 10:00am to 11:00am.
There are, in any event, no departmental functions tomorrow. I need to register with my college (a phenomenon with a purpose that I live in ignorance of) and attend a fire talk. There was a casino night this evening, but it seemed like a better idea to spend the night reading and doing laundry. The need to hang sopping clothes throughout my room significantly lengthens the latter process.
PS. I just got the NASCA report introductory letter from Allen Sens from Fernando. Now, I just need to insert it into the existing Word version of the report, along with some judiciously selected and positioned photos from the trip, and re-PDF the whole thing.
*Due to rounding, numbers do not add to 100%
Sunday, October 2
This morning, I finished my comprehensive read of this week's Economist, as well as a few more chapters from the slim but interminable Hollis and Smith book. I remember Tristan expressed some interest in Puerto Rico earlier, so he and others might be interested in reading this week's obituary of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos. While I doubt he will be sympathetic to its anti-revolutionary bias, it should at least provide a bit of background for examination of the issue of Puerto Rican independence.
The Oxford experience continues to be one that hangs at the cusp of the long drop into serious academic work. All the intellectual hubbub that surrounds courses is present: people reading and debating, current events being viewed through the prism of a discipline. At the same time, the treadmill itself has not started to rotate. That's especially awkward with both of my former projects still in limbo - the NASCA report stalled for lack of a letter from Allen Sens and the fish paper stillborn for lack of a journal willing to publish it. I hope that the sudden upturn of academic work here will somehow jostle both of those projects back onto the straight track to completion, an end that has seemed to be close at hand for a long while now.
The first in-college dinner, in the refectory, was an unanticipated throwback to my Totem Park days, though with worse food and more tightly packed undergraduates. In the last while, I've felt a diminishing desire to be in the company of large numbers of other people; it's the same kind of socialization fatigue that tends to set in three-quarters of the way through parties. In this circumstance, as in that one, the solution is a period of solitude, followed by one-on-one socialization with someone of whom I am quite fond. The first of those can be had relatively easily, by means of the library, a book, and my iPod. The second will be a bit more difficult to come across.
I made my first attempt to use SkypeOut this evening, and found the quality to be sorely lacking. The first person who I actually got through to (by reason of their being near the phone, not because Skype was unable to connect with others) was Meghan. Aside from the unavoidable lag-time of information traveling some thousands of kilometres, there were also plenty of cut-outs and a fair bit of distortion. Carrying on a normal conversation wasn't really possible. While the $0.017 per minute rate is quite appealing, I don't think VoIP of this quality will dislodge POTS anytime soon. Despite that, I think at least some of it was the result of problems with her connection, since talking to Greg Polakoff a few minutes later went much more smoothly. While the quality was markedly worse than a normal phone, at least the conversation was unceasingly smooth and comprehensible. Speaking with Katie Benjamin later was somewhere between the two, while speaking with my brother Sasha (the only call to a landline) was markedly better than any of the other calls, as far as clarity goes. In my preliminary assessment, SkypeOut gets seven out of ten. Still, given that I've made more than forty minutes worth of calls in total now (at a cost of 65 Euro cents), I can't really complain. Unlike computer-to-computer Skype - which generally sounds a bit better than the Plain Old Telephone System - when you use SkypeOut, headphones are not necessary for avoiding an unpleasant echo.
Anyhow, if you have a telephone and you don't mind a bit of irritation with regards to sound quality, pass on the number to me and I will try giving you a call.
Propped up on beanbag chairs and with a pair of lamps cross-illuminating the pages, I finished a few more chapters from Hollis and Smith tonight. As the book has progressed, it has moved into areas that seem more and more relevant to me. Most usefully, the progression has offered some solid material for rebutting the cruder realist and structural realist views of international relations. The commentary on game theory, particularly where it is and is not useful, is also quite valuable. At a couple of points, the book demonstrates quite startlingly how it was written prior to the end of the cold war, with all that implied for my myriad conceptions of international relations. Today involved so much reading that, by 9:00pm, it became worthwhile to put on my glasses for the first time in many months. I take my determination to push forward with it as comforting evidence that I will be able to handle the demands of the M.Phil programme.
Tonight, I took a relatively short walk with Nora, which took us across the Isis and eventually to an adventure playground of the sort that doesn't exist anymore in litigious North America. It reminded me a lot of the one that used to be on Grouse Mountain, back in the tender days of my childhood, which has long since been razed and replaced by a pond. Nora says that once the substantive portion of our time here begins tomorrow, she will no longer have the opportunity to devote time to random wanderings and conversations. I think the start of classes will just banish the lingering apprehension of these preliminary days, still leaving all the same basic needs for food and companionship intact. I think we've been preemptively socializing as we will once classes start, just doing more of it per day than will later be possible.
Sorry today's entry is so haphazard and generally all over the place. It was written in fits and starts and I don't feel properly composed to order it sensibly, with elegant transitions, at the moment.
PS. Glancing over my server logs, I noticed that someone at Harvard is reading the blog. My only guess as to whom is Utpal Sandesara, who I met at the Student Conference on United States Affairs as West Point, in November of 2004. If so, "Hello, and I hope life is going well." If not, the mystery persists.
Arriving home, just now, I realized that the entrance passcode for Library Court has become a reflexive series of movements for me, rather than a piece of information which I transform into them. Wadham is beginning to seep into me.
Aside from a very solid stretch of reading this morning, today was largely spent in eight hours of consecutive conversation with Margaret: the young economist who I met at the international orientation. We met in the afternoon at Blackwell's, the truly impressive bookstore just around the corner from the college, where I was previously tempted by signed hardback editions of Paradise Lost. (Signed by the editor, obviously, not Milton.) As well as three above-ground floors packed with fiction and non-fiction, there is also a basement that contains literally miles of shelving devoted to textbooks and other research oriented materials. While my efforts at thrift restrict me from converting my enthusiasm into patronage, I can still unambiguously applaud the sheer existence of such a place.
Margaret is a clever young South African who, quite crucially, maintains a fine sense of humour. When it comes to people seemingly well versed in matters of African development, it seems like a toss-up between a sense of irony or an all-consuming cynicism. When it comes to those you hope will actually make a difference in the matter over the course of their lives, the former wins out - coupled with a certain driving determination. She is also at the ideal stage between having developed an appreciation for Monty Python and having developed an extensive knowledge of the same. Such people are the ideal companions for Monty Python viewing.
Heading south from Blackwell's, we reached the familiar landmark of the Folly Bridge before heading eastward along the Isis. Unlike previous occasions, where the walk took me along the north bank and past the Christ Church Meadows, this walk followed the unexplored south bank well past them. Before long, the terrain became quite pastoral, with pastures off to the side and horses grazing. We carried along for about a kilometre before taking the first other bridge we saw back across the river and then following paths and roads parallel to it back west to Oxford proper.
Armed with sandwiches and soup from Sainsbury's, this evening brought me, for the first time, into an area of one of the other colleges apart from the main quad. (Now that I know that Sainsbury's halves the price of their sandwiches from about two quid to one after six, I may start eating nothing else.) Nuffield is one of the newer colleges, with an extended quad which I appreciated in the darkness. I had to take it on faith that the rectangular pool in the centre contains koi.
Margaret's room is even larger than Kelly's, and rather better furnished. Rather than looking out over the long courtyard at the centre of Nuffield College (located beside the Oxford Castle and home to many social scientists), it looks out over the street. While Margaret seems to have been able to bring rather more books from South Africa than I brought from Canada, she shares my sorrow with regards to having to abandon so many. A place feels naked and temporary without a few dozen well-read volumes. That said, the best thing for now will be to keep the collection I have boxed up in Vancouver as it is, while finding some used volumes and buying a few course related items to fill in my shelves.
While I don't want to get into specifics of conversation, it seems appropriate to stress how much I enjoyed Margaret's company. It was characterized, over-archingly, by the same phenomena that made my later conversations with Sasha Wiley so captivating: a sense, quite unusual for me, of comfort and belonging.
Margaret's cell phone, which she purchased in London on account of its small size, was a source of amusement. On the basis of a small number of rather open ended questions, with four to six options for each, it informed me of the correct fragrance for someone of my character. It likewise dispensed knowledge about the number of calories which one burns during eight hours of sailing, research, and love-making respectively. Clearly designed more for pre-adolescent women than economists, it did feature a currency converter which, alas, is based on unchanging exchange rates, perhaps based on those in effect on the day it was manufactured.
Both Margaret's view and the walk home demonstrated to me just how yobbish and degenerate Oxford can be on a Saturday night. On the high street, I passed clutch after clutch of adolescents alternatively dressed like actors in music videos and individuals stumbling around with nothing but a certain hazy determination to drive them forward. It made me glad that Library Court is a good fifty metres back from a less-than-very busy street, with several solid stone walls to break up noise.
Tomorrow, the proper part of the college orientation begins. We have high tea with the MCR Committee in the afternoon, followed by our first dinner in college. That will take place in the refectory, rather than the hall. Our first dinner in hall seems to be taking place on October 4th.
Saturday, October 1
Happy Birthday Sarah Johnston
This morning brought with it a Thanksgiving package from my family, the first issue of The Economist to be delivered here (along with The World in 2005), and my corrected Bodeleian card. Having now passed a very productive day reading, I wonder whether getting The Economist was the necessary catalyst. In my mind, time spent without an issue (either partially or fully read) inside my backpack is a kind of 'vacation time.' With luck, the vacation is now over.
I learned today who my college advisor will be. Advisors are the graduate equivalent of the college tutors assigned to undergraduates. Dr. Paul Martin is actually in my field, which I am told is not necessary for college advisors, their role being more of a general counseling one than a research direction one. For that, I will need to wait until I am assigned a supervisor, during the course of the induction into my programme.
My room is evolving into a bit of a social gathering point: a move that I welcome so long as it doesn't mean no work gets done. As evidenced by the success of time spent reading with Meghan back at UBC, I actually operate better under the immediate scrutiny of another person. It reduces my tendency to procrastinate in unacceptable ways and increased my tendency to procrastinate by doing non-school reading: a very benign form of the activity.
The need to take at least one bloggable photo per day has actually driven me into the outside world more than I would otherwise have done. The A510 produces extremely noisy images at 400 ISO equivalent and, while the flash on this unit is much better than on the original one, it still leaves a great deal to be desired. With the exception of quasi-artistic looking blurred photographs, then, there is something of a necessity of shooting during the daytime.
Life back on the west coast seems to have become busy for a lot of people. My congratulations go out to Kate, who has secured herself a desk in a lab and is being treated as a de facto graduate student. Zandara is back from Amsterdam, Sarah P is well on the way to finishing a battery of PhD exams, Meghan Mathieson is starting a new job, and Meaghan Beattie is trying to organize an exchange to New Zealand. Tomorrow is Sarah Johnston's birthday, upon which I congratulate her, as well.
I am grateful to Sarah P. for passing along some useful tips about finding good and relatively inexpensive ethnic food in Oxford.
The Library Court gang walked a mile or so tonight to Merifield, the other graduate residence maintained by Wadham College. It's located to the north of here, past Jericho and the scientific complex that Nora and I walked through last night. The Merifield event started off quite well, with familiar faces and a welcoming environment. After about an hour, things became a bit too loud for me. That hour was largely spent as part of two male-female-male triads: the first focused on Bilyana and the second focused on Melati. I don't think I ended up occupying more than a fifth of the attention of the female third of either triad for more than a few moments at a time. Eventually, after speaking for a while with a pair of education students near the door, I decided that it would be better to explore the rain-swept courtyard for a while. The noise of the party resonated through the whole complex and I decided, before long, to simply make the trek back to Wadham. It really wasn't my kind of engagement.
Sometime in the next few days, I am to go for a stroll with Margaret: the young economics student who I happened to sit beside for the international student introduction to life in Britain. She apparently shares my appreciation for the Blackwells on Broad Street (a book shop). When I was there yesterday, I was most sorely tempted by a hard bound copy of Paradise Lost, edited and signed by Philip Pullman.
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[Entry modified, 23 December 2005]
After an excellent but late night yesterday, it was difficult to get into a proper reading stride this afternoon. The necessity of getting the reading done for the core seminar on Tuesday, preparing a potential presentation (20% chance of being called upon this time), and working on the statistics assignment means I will be opting out of tonight's IR social event tonight.I quite like the style of writing in Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis: though written in 1939 it still seems highly cogent and relevant. Carr is definitely on his strongest footing when he outlines the tension between pragmatism and idealism in world politics and the way in which the former is sterile without the latter, and the latter powerless without the former. While interesting, Carr's book is less than entirely useful for the core seminar, as it is much more theoretical than historical. With luck, I shall be able to muster the energy to read the Clavin or Feinstein book tonight, though all the noise from Saturday-night-crazed undergraduates is in league with general tiredness to reduce the likelihood of such outcomes. Even with headphones on and the loudest possible music that does not totally demolish my ability to read, abrasive screaming and laughter penetrates my small and patchy cloud of studiousness.
At some point tomorrow, I am to meet Emily to read. It's certainly a thing that I generally do more efficiently with company, as I am more effectively constrained from moving on to more interesting tasks.
Miscellaneous:
- Those who appreciate The Shining should see the odd satirical trailer linked on Alison's blog
- I am now quite seriously in need of a haircut. If someone can suggest a place in Oxford that will restore my hair to something generally akin to its appearance in the blog profile, at a reasonable cost, I would be most appreciative.
- During my first month in England, I spent £168.72 on food: £136.29 at Sainsbury's. That's C$352.98 in total, with C$285 at Sainsbury's. Those figures do not include the cost of dinners in hall, before I began opting out of all of them. That represents 46.5% of my gross spending, compared with 7.6% for just four binders, four pads of paper, and a hole punch at Staples.
This afternoon brought the dream of a British bank account another step closer, though still without any knowledge of when the whole process will be successfully concluded. It also involved grocery shopping, the completion of a preliminary read of this week's Economist, some reading on Dawes and Locarno, and correspondence with Emily and Kate. The former is heading out into the countryside with friends for the start of the weekend; the latter has returned to the city from the woods, and is processing the data on bears collected while there.Trying to complete our first quantitative methods assignment has been frustrating. I can see that the second and third question, respectively, would be best solved by means of regression and hypothesis testing, but I don't perfectly recall how to do either. STATA is definitely an impediment rather than an aid. For the first assignment, I am fairly sure they just want us to 'eyeball it,' but I would definitely rather do it in a statistically rigorous way.
Last night was great fun. The wine drinking event was actually a competition. In each of seven rounds, we were presented with an expensive wine of a particular variety, for instance Pinotage, and a cheap wine of the same sort. The objective was to use your knowledge of wine (of which I have none) and the descriptions of the wines provided to deduce which was which. Given my total lack of familiarity with many of the genres presented, my ambition was to do better than random chance would have suggested. Much to my surprise, I actually won. This is particularly shocking given that the elimination round at the end was based on one's knowledge of cricket. Asked how many of a particular cricket related statistic a certain cricket player had accumulated in a tournament, I confidently said "twenty-one" without the slightest knowledge of what was actually being asked or what sort of number was likely. In any event, I now have a bottle of white wine from Nuffield's own cellars sitting beside my Glenlivit.
Aside from the competition itself, the atmosphere at Nuffield was great fun. I met Carolyn Haggis - presently a D.Phil student at Nuffield, formerly an M.Phil in IR student at Brasenose. She is living proof that the program can be survived, and in such a way that you would be willing to read for a second degree at Oxford.
The event was not at all stuffy and the commentary from the two hosts (and introducers of wines) was rather amusing. We were even treated to a rendition of the South African national anthem, though Margaret tells me that it was not without inaccuracies. All told, it was a night of excellent company and good fun; hopefully, a suitable prelude to getting a lot of work done today. Many thanks to Margaret for the invitation.
Friday, October 21
Observations
The subject emerged from his room shortly after nine, showered, and left Wadham College through the back gate. He walked along Saville Road to Jowett Walk, turned left onto St. Cross Road, and then turned right onto Manor Road - approaching the Social Sciences Building from the south. After greeting some fellow students, he chose a station near the middle of the information technology room, where he remained for the duration of the two-hour workshop. He was not attentive, spending the time completing the bulk of the first assignment rather than following the printed instructions. He also spent time responding to emails and reading blog entries. When the class ended, he walked northward along St. Cross road, accompanied by two colleagues, and passed through the University Parks before separating from them and walking southward down Parks Road to Wadham College. At no point was contact with the subject lost.
I got a package from Vancouver in the mail today which is very well appreciated. My mother sent me a coffee press and a pound of coffee. I am now decidedly well prepared for coffee accelerated reading and caffeine-bolstered comprehension.
Today's lecture on the advanced study of IR was really excellent. It was a presentation by Dr. Marc Stears about ideological and historical approaches to political theory. It was about two schools of textual interpretation in political theory: the Cambridge School and the Ideological School, based in Oxford. Basically, each tries to address questions about which texts we need to study, how we should go about doing it, and how we should write about texts. Each is based on the perspective that all writing that seeks to forward political ends can be viewed as 'speech acts' and need to be evaluated according to the context in which they were written and the intentions of the author. Decidedly not post-modernist (since it embraces, rather than rejects, authorial intentionality), it nonetheless seems like a useful way to think about texts. Some of my enthusiasm definitely derives from the rhetorical skill of Dr. Stears, who was probably the most effective lecturer we have had in the program so far. If the opportunity arises to see him speak again, I will take it up. Also, I've added Quentin Skinner's Visions of Politics to my discretionary reading list.
I learned today that, in addition to the paper which I need to write for Dr. Hurrell in the next nine days, I am supposed to write a paper for the core seminar instructors, due on the Tuesday of 4th week. Worse, it is means to be written on one of the topics for which I did not prepare a presentation. That means I have to do another whole week's worth of reading. Given that I now have Charles Feinstein's The European Economy Between the Wars, Patricia Clavin's The Great Depression in Europe, 1929-1939, and E.H. Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939 on two day loan, I think I will have plenty of motivation to start drawing down my newfound strategic coffee supply.
Having dinner with Emily tonight was most enjoyable. We ended up having dinner, and later going to the Green College bar, with Roham and some of the other members of the M.Phil program. Roham is an extremely personable young man - good natured and somehow capable of enlivening those around him, while making everyone feel comfortable. Both individually and as a pair, he and Emily make for superb company.
Dinner at St. Antony's is quite a different affair from the process at Wadham. It's cafeteria style, to begin with, and includes much more selection that at Wadham, where a binary meat/vegetable decision is all the choice you get. They also have the benefit of a salad bar, the opportunity to get beverages apart from water with your meal, and a more flexible timetable with regards to when you can eat. They even have candles. Wadham may be closer to the authentic medieval hall-dining experience, but I don't think I would be opting out of all meals at St. Antony's.
After dinner, coffee in the MCR, and a brief foray to Emily's room, we set off on a short walk to the interesting grounds of Green College. In particular, I found the observatory buildings which I located while wandering outside to be quite interesting. The bar itself was noisy, though not crassly so, and seemed to have reasonably priced drinks and good conversations ongoing within. Emily and I ended up staying until a bit before 10:30, when it seemed wiser to retire to respective colleges for reading or sleep.
With two papers to be done in the next two weeks, I've the feeling this will be a bit of a grinding period. I just need to develop a schedule that meets out productivity and recovery in doses of the right size, to maintain both forward motion and sanity.
Tomorrow, we have our second quantitative methods lab. Infinitely more appealing, Margaret has invited me to a wine tasting event. The description which she has passed on from her college is too good not to quote here:When this was suggested, the economist in the room at the time said something about demand, supply and why bad things happen when prices are set at zero. I didn't really understand it, but I retorted that we shouldn't worry because most students at Nuffield are quantitative social scientists and therefore don't have any friends, wine-drinking or otherwise. As a result, I have been sent to my room to think about what I've done. On the upside, this means that there will be (marginally) more wine available tomorrow for you and your (sensible and not excessive number of) guests.
One one final note (these entries are getting too long as it is), I realized today that I haven't been more than three kilometres from where I sit right now for nearly a month. A trip somewhere - with London the obvious choice - seems to be in order. Do any of the Oxfordians who seem to be reading the blog share my desire for some kind of short expedition?
Thursday, October 20
This morning, I received an invitation to Sarah Johnston's wedding, to take place on the 18th of March in a church in Chichester. This will be the second friend's wedding I attend and I am looking forward to it. It will be good to meet Sarah's parents again (I did so, very briefly, last summer) and to meet some more of her friends. My congratulations go out to her and Peter. I look forward to when I shall be able to refer to the pair of them as Doctors Webster.
After working for a while on the Commonwealth Scholarship application, making and drinking a half litre of coffee, and inquiring at the domestic bursary about fees, I wandered through a very rainy Oxford to Nuffield. From the eighth floor of their tower, I got my first really elevated look at Oxford. Later, in the Nuffield Library, I read Dr. Hurrell's article: "Global Inequality and International Institutions" (Metaphilosophy Volume 32 Issue 1&2 Page 34 - January 2001). I appreciate the normative character of his argument and his determination that world politics can be changed for the better. Reading something that is heavy on references to political theory is a welcome contrast to wading through hundreds of pages of unfamiliar history written by academics unknown to me.
Despite its apparently excellent politics and economics collections, the library was quite empty. I mustn't have seen more than three people during the three hours I spent inside. Cornmarket Street is consistently the only part of Oxford that really gets crowded. While there are often throngs of tourists marching along the High Street, they only rarely seriously impede passage. I always feel a bit odd walking past tour groups in Wadham. I feel as though I am on display as a sample of Animalia Chordata Vertebrata Mammalia Primate Hominidae Homo sapiens studentis graduatis Oxfordius. I try to look very clever for them.
By the time I left the library to meet Dr. Hurrell, it had become quite beautiful out - in that way which can only quite be managed after a proper downpour, when the trees are still dripping and the warm colouration of sunlight comes as a surprise. Today featured both the heaviest rain I've seen in Oxford and the most stunning emergence from rain into one of those slightly sodden afternoons where the sun is welcome rather than unpleasant.
My meeting with Andrew Hurrell went very well. From what other students had told me, I expected meeting one's supervisor to discuss a paper to be something akin to facing an inquisition. In actuality, he both complimented and criticized the paper and we had quite a good hour-long discussion about some of the theoretical issues involved.
In particular, we identified the character of domestic German politics as an area of exploration that wasn't well treated in the paper. Recently unified, Germany both had an unusual impetus to engage in some kind of national project (say, colonization) and an unusually broad dialogue about what that project could be. As Dr. Hurrell pointed out, the phrase "a place in the sun," which is constantly used to refer to Germany's ambition to develop a place for itself as a rising power in the international system, possesses a vagueness that underscores the lack of definition behind what such a project could involve. We also discussed that issue of how states perceive themselves internally and as components of an international society in the contemporary contexts of Russia in the G8 and the matter of nuclear proliferation. Those are the big tables around which great powers sit today and, given things like the rise of China, understanding how developing powers can be peacefully and effectively integrated is of immense value. The conversation increased my conviction that Dr. Hurrell is a man with whom I will be able to work well.
I also indicated to Dr. Hurrell that I would like to write one of my two optional papers on some issue having to do with nuclear weapons. For years, nuclear politics has interested me insofar as it represents an unusually explicit arena to examine the structure of the international system, as well as the psychologies of individual leaders. He suggested that I keep my eye on what the Institute for Strategic Studies in London is doing, and that perhaps they will hold an interesting conference or seminar on the matter this year.
During the next ten to fourteen days, I am to write another paper. It should either be on the topic of last week's core seminar or this week's and Dr. Hurrell insists that this one should be most historical and less theoretical. Helpfully, he recognizes that we do not necessarily have much background in these time periods. The assignment is therefore an explicit test of my ability to work in an uncertain area. Walking across the Nuffield quad, right after the meeting, I had my first solid sense that I have what it takes to be a graduate student.
After the meeting ended, I met with Margaret and we spoke in her room for a while before walking to New College to see the mound erected there in honour of those hurled over Oxford's city walls after dying of the plague. As she demonstrated to me, it manifests a peculiar acoustic property if you clap at it.
In February, it seems that my mother will be going to Iran. Either on the way out or back, she will visit me in Oxford. A few years ago, she began teaching English as a second language to people who have recently immigrated to Canada or who are seeking to do so. Many of her students have been Iranian and it is at their invitation that she will be going. Having living in Pakistan for many years, and having visited Turkey a few years ago, it's not a part of the world with which she is unfamiliar. She has actually lived in a remarkable number of places: from Czechoslovakia to Antigua to the United States.
Also in the news:- I may be forced to change my primary email address due to a trademark dispute in the U.K.
- Anyone who wants or needs a GMail invitation, just ask. I have 94 of them.
- Did you know, entries posted at "12:01" were almost certainly posted before then, but with a modified timestamp to maintain the one-entry-per-day format?
- Here is a blog with some powerful photos
Wednesday, October 19
I had five straight hours of class today: the core seminar from 11:00am to 1:00pm, a seminar on the changing character of war between 1:00pm and 2:00pm, and then our quantitative methods lecture from 2:00pm to 4:00pm. Above all, it was the fine company of my fellow M.Phils that made the whole length of it pleasant. In particular, I appreciated the company of the St. Antony's group, which includes Emily and Roham1.
This morning, on the way to the seminar, I was delighted to find a letter from Meghan Mathieson in my pigeon hole. It's the first piece of physical matter transferred to me in Oxford by a friend of mine. The letter was sealed with the wax and stamp which she bought in my company in Italy and it included a small bag of the tea I've made such frequent reference to drinking with her and Tristan back in Fairview. It's good to hear about how her new job is going, how her family is doing, and the holiday festivities they had with Matt's family. Receiving a handwritten letter is always a special event, despite the frequency with which I communicate with friends by electronic means. There is an undeniable romanticism to it, as well as a sense of permanence that can be both thrilling and daunting. I shall be sure to respond in kind once I get my hands on some loose leaf paper.
The core seminar discussion seemed more accessible and productive this week. The topics under examination were Wilson, the Paris peace settlements, and the Middle East. Emily ended up presenting on our topic, and can now savour the knowledge that she will not have to present again for the next five weeks. Since there are eight weeks in the term and seven people being assigned each question, it seems the last week will be another open contest. For next week, I need to read about whether the Dawes Plan and Locarno Pact offered only the illusion of peace, or whether they represented a re-emergence of a concert of the great powers. I have a general recollection from Gossen's History 432 class of what Locarno was, though I can't remember a thing about the Dawes Plan. Some research is clearly in order.
After the core seminar, we immediately headed upstairs to one of the lunchtime seminars being put on by the Changing Character of War Program. Today's was on the changing character of war crimes and it seemed to be universally considered less than entirely compelling or useful. The speaker was unforgivably vague in a number of areas and generally failed to interrogate his own theoretical grounding, or even make clear what exactly he was trying to do. That said, the free sandwiches were much appreciated.
Today's quantitative measures lecture was a big improvement over last week's. While several concepts were still defined in unnecessarily vague and wooly terms and some of the maths were sprung out abruptly rather than decently explained, it managed to convey some essential ideas about sampling, bias, distributions, and the like. For those who would want to actually use much of this information, the class is absolutely tearing forward. Our two hour lecture next week is meant to finish up sampling distributions and cover the whole idea of hypothesis testing. I wouldn't expect a non-genius without prior statistical experience to have a very good idea of the specifics of what is being taught, unless they are doing a good bit of outside reading and practice. The first statistics course I took at UBC covered this stuff over a few weeks worth of one hour lectures, with plenty of hands on activities.
After the last lecture, I walked with the St. Antony's group to their college. As we turned from Manor Road onto St. Cross Road, I was quite surprised to see Evren walking up the road. Many of you may remember him as my first roommate at UBC as an undergraduate. We shared a two-bed room in Totem Park from September of 2001 until he moved out of residence early the next year. As you can tell from me not knowing his last name, we were not particularly close. All this was back during the time when Sarah Johnston lived in Totem, as did Lindi. I appreciatively recall her treating me, on some nights, to lovely renditions of Pachelbel's Canon in D on the piano. Having run into his friend Guillaume in Montreal twice now, I was quite startled to find Evren in Oxford, apparently working on an M.Phil in Economics (like Margaret).
In anticipation of the next two batches of scholarship applications, I printed thirty passport sized photos today. Due to the odd pricing system at the photo shop on Cornmarket street, thirty cost the same amount as five would have, and they were finished more quickly as well. I've used twenty-two of these little photos in Oxford so far, and I need six more just for the Commonwealth Scholarship application. Having thought about it more than was really worthwhile, I maintain that there is no legitimate reason for which a scholarship committee should request photographs. It can only contribute to bias.
The Domestic Bursar has given me a three-day extension, until the 21st, to pay my battels. It seems extremely unlikely that it will happen by then, as I only mailed the authorization yesterday and, even once the electronic transfer occurs, the bank will hold it for some unspecified period of time before being willing to release it. I am now very close to having completed the lengthiest screening for money laundering risk that a reasonable person could be asked by a bank to endure. To celebrate, the bank sent me a fake bank card (I am not joking) and instructions that I should walk over to my home branch to get a real one. Astonishingly, the Bank of Montreal tells me that the issue of whether or not to transfer money internationally "is at the sole discretion of the branch." No, no - I don't think we're going to let you withdraw money from your account right now. You see, we've grown rather fond of it.
After making dinner and running errands (including the purchase of a French press and coffee), I went to meet some IR students at The Eagle and Child: the pub that CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien used to frequent. I arrived about twenty minutes after Anna advised us to and, despite two thorough sweeps, found it to be as devoid of IR M.Phil students as the web forum I have been trying to cajole them into using. It was the first time in Oxford when I've wished I had a cell phone. Wherever they wandered to or ended up, I hope they had a good time. It was probably befitting of a graduate student to spend the evening reading Hedley Bull, anyhow. After spending C$56.00 today on a coffee press, quarter kilo of coffee, and set of photographs, it's probably a better idea for my finances as well.
Tomorrow, I am invited to make another foray into the Oxford library system with Emily. It will be good to get my hands on some of the required books before everyone else descends upon them. Helpfully, they have now scheduled the two seminar groups to cover different topics in different weeks. The Social Sciences Library is definitely the best resource, in terms of materials available, though my fondness for the Codrington as a place in which to read continues to grow.
On Thursday, Emily has invited me to come to dinner at St. Antony's. Speaking of that elegant and animated young woman: when introducing someone on the blog, I've learned to be cautious in how much I say about them. It can be quite hard to anticipate how people will respond to having information about them splashed about in the wilds of the internet. Emboldened by her comments on the matter today, I feel at liberty to disclose a little more.
I've found that one of the more interesting things about Canadians introducing themselves in Oxford is what part of the country, if any, they initially describe themselves as being from. Some refer to specific cities, others to provinces, others to regions. My standard answer is 'western Canada.' From what I have heard, Emily doesn't seem to identify exclusively with one region of Canada or another, though she has spent a lot of time in British Columbia. It must be interesting to have such peripatetic parents as hers, not to mention a pair of artists for forebears. Emily herself I know fairly little about, though I appreciate the vitality which she projects. To write more now risks misrepresenting her, and embarrassing myself, through speculation.
Emily suggested, as we were walking into our quantitative methods lecture, that I ought to sell editing services to undergraduates, as opposed to being experimented on for small amounts of cash. Having worked for the history, political science, and international relations journals at UBC, as well as having looked over dozens of essays for friends, I suppose it's something I could do fairly well. My concerns would be, firstly, the negative association that exists with regards to "essay editors" at university. Some, it cannot be denied, are little more than plagiarism assistants. Secondly, I worry about the amount of time such work might take up. It's one thing to look over a paper for Emily which is based on readings I have generally done, a topic which I am in the process of examining, and an area that I will have to discuss in the future. It's rather another to be thrown into some unfamiliar discipline. Still, it bears consideration as a possibility - especially during the vacations between terms. Coming up on my first monthly financial analysis, it is evident that a few extra Pounds would not hurt at all.
Aside from library explorations with Emily tomorrow, I am meeting Dr. Hurrell at four, before which I should definitely review my paper and perhaps a few of the key readings which I make reference to in it. It seems a bit odd to me how nervous people become about meeting their supervisors. After all, these people have seen phalanx after phalanx of graduate students march nervously past them. Getting agitated about interacting with them seems like a mechanism for diminishing a collegial spirit and the development of an effective and equitable relationship.
Immediately after meeting him, I am to meet with Margaret, which I am sure will be both pleasant and interesting. It seems that she may be taking up an offer to teach in South Africa during the period between the two years of the M.Phil. The idea reminds me that I really need to make an effort to find a decent job for myself during that period. Minimum wage, service sector toil is no longer an acceptable option.
[1] I am guessing that his GMail username is a more accurate spelling of his name than the one on our class list. (On a related note, I was amused today to find a piece of mail that butchered not my name, but that of the college. Mail from a bank in Oxford.)
Tuesday, October 18
I got my jabs this morning and then spent an agonizing few hours trying to deal with the Bank of Monteal, NatWest, and the Domestic Bursary. The last of those is open for exactly three hours a day and the first has all of its computer servers down for maintenance. Meanwhile, NatWest seems to think that it will take as long as 28 days for a wire transfer from Canada to actually clear, even after the Bank of Montreal charges me $120 for it. To just deposit a normal cheque from BMO into NatWest could apparently take twice as long, all while the college is imposing a 26% rate of interest on outstanding fees. This information I passed to the secretary of the Domestic Bursar, who says she will check if I can get an extension. I still haven't heard anything about paying my tuition fees, which are about three times as large at my battels.
After finally leaving Wadham, around 11:30, I went and bought my first Venti dark roast in England, at a cost of £1.75 (C$3.63). The Starbucks on Cornmarket, near the intersection with the High Street, is quite enormous and extends back from the roadway like a burrow. While there, I learned that Sulawesi here costs £8.80 (C$18.30) a pound. Since drip coffee in cups costs 1.73 times as much here, and ground coffee is only 1.18 times as expensive, the logic of buying a French press becomes plain. I will take a look at Boswell's after my classes tomorrow.
After a bit of coffee and solo reading, I met Emily on the south side of the Radcliffe Camera and took her into the Codrington Library, where we read for a few hours. The combination of the setting and the company worked very well for me. I finished Avi Shlaim's book and this week's Economist. Possibly due to the coffee, I felt that I retained much more of what I read. Afterwards, Emily and I discussed the core seminar topic for tomorrow, walked to Wadham, and then sauntered over to St. Antony's. Like Nuffield, it is an all-graduate college, focused on the social sciences, and difficult to become a member of. Located northwards, past Rhodes House and Keble College, though not as far off as St. Hugh's, it is situated at the intersection of Bevington and Woodstock roads. I saw it only extremely briefly, but I would definitely like to return. As the last major IR library where I am not registered to read, I have a particular as well as a general impetus to do so.
I quite like Emily and am delighted that she has invited me for dinner at St. Antony's this Thursday. With a mother from British Columbia, now living in Vermont, and a father who lives in Oxford, I suppose she would be the ideal liaison between this culture and then one I was embedded in for twenty years previously. Her areas of interest at the moment centre on the role of media in warfare and the issue of humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect. Both seem to me like issues likely to provoke long and interesting discussions.
This evening, I have been reading Fromkin's hefty The Peace to End All Peace, drinking tea, and preparing an outline for the presentation I have a 1/6 chance of being called upon to deliver tomorrow morning. Fromkin's entire book is directly relevant to this week's question, though it far exceeds my capability to read the bulk of six hundred dense pages during the evening of a day that has already been well saturated with differing views on the character of post-Ottoman Syndrome. I will also read Michelle's paper and at least begin to edit Emily's before I go to sleep. Wisdom in a coffee press, indeed.
With a two page outline written up, I feel fairly well prepared for the eventuality that I will be called upon to present tomorrow. I must make an effort to understand the nature of examinations here and thus what portion of this material I will be required or expected to retain. If I knew for certain that these outlines would at least help me revise, they would seem less like a gamble on an unlikely outcome. Of course, Dr. Hurrell has indicated that he wants an essay on the Middle East peace settlement after WWI at some point. I shall ask him when on Wednesday, when we are to discuss my paper on German and Austrio-Hungarian war guilt. I must also remember to press him about writing me a letter for the Commonwealth Scholarship, as Allen Sens has already done.
Having to develop a comprehensive answer to a specific question definitely requires a lot more reading than simple participation in a seminar would. In the latter scenario, all you need are a few clever observations on topics relevant to the discussion, to be deployed at various points throughout the discussion as testaments to the power of your insight. Having to take a stand on such a huge question leaves you with long and undefended borders to the territory of your knowledge, all of them vulnerable to those who actually have a broad understanding of the theory and history involved.
Monday, October 17
Stuck in a library, perhaps, but with thoughts in loftier places
Despite another mishap with my alarm clock, I managed to do quite well today. With two short breaks outside excluded, I was in the Social Sciences Library for the entire six hour span from opening to closing. To start with, I read the relevant half of Shlaim Avi's War and Peace in the Middle East. While very readable, it underscored just how little I know about the region at the time. It would be quite impossible to develop a comprehensive knowledge of it by Tuesday. Actually, I have serious doubts about the wisdom of this academic approach. On the basis of no actual instruction, we are being called upon to synthesize weekly arguments on the basis of highly detailed, numerous, and academic accounts. While it's a game that I have some ability to play, I don't really think it is making me more knowledgeable or capable.
Despite my doubts, and bolstered by two sandwiches prepared from materials purchased at Sainsbury's, rather than purchased directly from there, I carried on reading. I finished half of Elizabeth Monroe's Britain's Moment in the Middle East: 1914-71. It too was fairly good to read, though it made many references to personages and no-longer-extant political entities that I know nothing about. As with Avi, I at least maintain the gist of the argument. Once I finish reading the relevant sections from David Fromkin's The Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East I should have enough raw material to build a decent fifteen minute presentation about.
During one of today's short intra-library breaks, I created a Google Group for the graduate freshers in the IR program. It will be publicly accessible, in case anyone is interested. I am hoping to use it to coordinate weekly meetings with the six other members of my heptet for the core seminar. Since none of us will be able to do all the readings, it would be enriching for all of us to have a short discussion before the actual seminar takes place. Doing so should also reduce some of the stress and wastefulness associated with having everyone prepare presentations independently.
An hour after the library closed, I met Margaret outside Nuffield. Through the light rain, we wandered to a coffee shop on St. Aldate's, which is open until midnight every day of the week. While I can't remember the extended form of its name, it abbreviates to G and D's. It is located quite near the music shop where Nora bought a guitar string and not far from Christ Church College, the Head of the River, and the Folly Bridge (each progressively farther south).
As before, talking with Margaret was relaxed and pleasant. I learned that we share the intention of eventually climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. As I recall, someone from my father's firm climbed it at some point during the past few years. It's something I would rather like to do during one of the stretches between terms, if only so that I could mildly amaze people who asked me what I did over the course of the vacation. After coffee, we wandered to Wadham and then back to Nuffield, where I left her in the company of her friend Anna.
Tomorrow morning, I am to visit the Wadham doctors on Beaumont Street for a meningitis and mumps vaccination. After that, I shall return to the scrutinizing of The Peace to End All Peace before meeting Emily at one. In case I haven't mentioned her already, Emily is part of the IR M.Phil group, Canadian, located at St. Antony's, and an alumna of Brown. I wonder if she knew Eva. She has kindly invited me, at some indefinite future point, to come to dinner at her college.
Other tasks for tomorrow include learning what NatWest would charge me if I simply wrote a cheque from the Bank of Montreal for the amount I want to transfer, rather than going through the bother of acquiring, signing, and mailing an Agreement for Verbal and Facsimile Transmissions to my home branch, then authorizing a wire transfer that will cost $50. In a related task, I need to go formally request an extension for paying my battles from the Domestic Bursar. They will have started charging me interest on the 14th. I also need to contact the department about why they haven't sent me a bill for my first term tuition and the BC student loans office about why they haven't sent me anything in months. It should be more-or-less obvious by now that the above list is mostly for my benefit, because it is very useful to have such things in places where you can find them quickly and they cannot be lost.
Looking through the glossy brochure for the Oxford Union, there is much that makes it tempting. They seem to have a fairly large lending library, which is always a valuable resource (especially when it is focused on history and politics). They regularly have excellent speakers: presidents of countries, Salman Rushdie, Terry Pratchett, and Jeffery Sacks this term alone. They have a couple of nice looking member's lounges, complete with the availability of £1 pints. Up until Thursday of next week, I could get a lifetime membership for £156 (C$340). After that, it becomes even more expensive. At a third of the cost, I would join readily. As it stands, I think that I shall not. $340 would go a fair way towards my eventual Kilimanjaro climb.
Kilimanjaro is 5,895m tall: 4.7 times as high as Grouse Mountain, which is what Alison, Jonathan, and I meant to climb a few days before I left. While the comparison is obviously quite deceptive, in terms of the respective difficulty of the climbs, it does offer the hope that it would not be an entirely impossible thing to actually pull off. Climbing Uhuru Peak on Kilimanjaro requires neither rock nor ice climbing skills, the major difficulty being the need to acclimatize to prevent altitude sickness. The climb can apparently be done in as little as four or five days. Wikipedia tells me that 15,000 people a year try to climb Kilimanjaro, though only 40% persist to the summit. Seeing how eminently feasible it would be to make an attempt in the next few years, my determination to do so increases considerably. It might be a good way to celebrate the completion of my M.Phil. Obviously, it would require quite a lot of fitness training beforehand.
I should, in any event, stop wandering through Kilimanjaro sites and return to the enormously less interesting task of reading for my core seminar.
Sunday, October 16
We matriculated today. I woke up early and bought a cap and bow tie, as well as a Sainsbury's sandwich and bagels for breakfast, before returning to Wadham to get dressed in 'sub fusc' for the first time. Sub fusc, for men, means a dark suit with black shoes, a white bow tie, an academic cap, and a robe appropriate to the level of the degree for which you are reading.
Once we were all suitably attired, we attended a short introduction in hall, followed by a tedious roll call. We then walked the short distance to the Sheldonian Theatre where a short exchange in Latin between a pair of officials was followed by a slightly longer speech in English. During the course of the event, we all officially became lifetime members of the University of Oxford, as we were already members of our respective colleges. Unlike in the past, when the university administered a matriculation test in Latin to ensure the colleges are not admitting dullards, they were willing to take us on faith about the colleges and departments respective abilities to select. We then spent a tedious hour or so being sorted by height, re-given the roll call, assembled, photographed, and dismissed in the main quad of Wadham. It's the only time so far I've seen people walking on the grass.
After matriculation, I went and got some vegetarian lunch with Nora at the Wheatsheaf before visiting the larger Sainsbury's near Bonn Square and returning to Wadham. The more distant Sainsbury's is enormously larger than the one at the intersection of Cornmarket and Broad Streets, beside the graveyard, where I have done all my shopping so far. The produce seemed to be marginally less fresh, but there was definitely a far greater selection to be had. They even had bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale (which my mother bought me for my goodbye party) for 50p less than the JCR bar. Aside from two of those, I bought cheese, bread, vegetable soups, apples, bananas, and a few other trinkets.
I really do have an exceptional amount of work to do, though I am feeling strangely incapable of coming to grips with it. Dealing with masses of reading is neither a talent of mine nor something that frequently appeals to me. My biggest advantage seems to lie in circumstances where very little time exists for comtemplation and deliberation. My advantage over more dilligent others diminishes as the time alloted to complete a task increases. Despite that tendency, as a graduate student I suppose I will need to come to terms with lengthy readings - particularly by sorting out the structural arrangements under which it will take place. The resumption of something along the lines of my round-the-dinner table tea and reading sessions with Meghan and Tristan would be welcome. I may also need to overcome my quibbles about the cost and buy a French press and some coffee.
In the evening, between stretches of reading, I spoke with my mother over Skype and sent her some photos from the matriculation ceremony. I was glad to hear that my family is doing well, though Sasha isn't attending school because of a labour dispute. Hopefully, it will end soon.
Tomorrow, I am hoping to spend the better part of six hours reading in the Social Science Library on Manor Road. I have a great deal of preparation to do for my core seminar and for the paper that Dr. Hurrell eventually wants on the same topic. It has been difficult, so far, to motivate myself for course-oriented readings. As I told Nora, my brain is a bit like a large industrial wood chipper. It can process a lot of information quickly, under the right circumstances, but it draws a lot of power and can be quite dangerous for the operator if used carelessly or when in a poor state of repair. Getting all those spinning blades running smoothly together, without losing too many limbs and pints of blood, basically defines my big personal project for the next short while.
I don't know whether it's the product of dissolved minerals in the water here or reflective of the chemical make-up of British tea, but it seems to be enormously more staining than the North American sort. My caffeine mug needs to be vigorously scrubbed with soap after each usage to remove one or more brown rings left deposited inside it by the Earl Grey it contained. It's not something I ever experienced with any brand of tea in Canada.
I am still getting used to the distinctive taste of the water here, though it no longer jumps out at me quite as much as it did when I first arrived. As I've learned from almost all my travels, people in Vancouver should take delight in the quality of their tap water. While I am sure this water is entirely safe, and probably even charming in some English kind of way, it doesn't have the character of newly melted snow, shipped from a resevoir located a forty minute walk of your house.
Several times in the past, I've referred to Library Court as a panopticon: a kind of prison invented by Jeremy Bentham in which all prisoners can see into one another's cells and where they are at least potentially observed by a central watchman. While important to Bentham's idea, there is no watchman here. Still, the idea of constant exposure to one another is quite useful for understanding how I feel about living here. The inescapable low-level mutual awareness is particularly true in an auditory fashion. While you can't generally hear what is being said, you can always here when a conversation is going on and almost always determine who between. Sometimes, this can be uncomfortable for me. Living in Totem and in Fairview (except in my last year there), my neighbours were almost always hostile to me. That produces a kind of uncomfortable siege mentality, but also a reasonable sense of isolation and privacy. You may be stuck behind a wall, but at least you're the only one on this side. Library Court offers less opportunity for isolation which is, in the end, a thing that I frequently need. I shall need to find other places in Oxford where it is feasible to be alone and, crucially, also possible to get work done.
Today's short segments:- There is a new version of iTunes out, but after updating once only to find that the new version had crippled music sharing (only letting five people connect before it disables itself until you restart), I am wary of upgrading. It brings out the same nervousness as paying any amount for songs that there is no guarantee whatsoever will still play later on, as using any of the legitimate online music services requires.
- Here is another description of Oxford today.
Saturday, October 15
It's startling to think that the first term is now one eighth done, though I am told there is plenty of work to be done during the six week 'breaks' between terms.
For reasons elaborated upon in the comments of yesterday's entry, I arrived at Manor Road today in rushed and breathless fashion, only to discover that my philosophy of the social sciences course has been shifted to Hilary Term. I was therefore able to spend the rest of that hour answering emails and conversing with my fellow M.Phil students. Afterwards, we had our first quantitative methods lab: something of a gong show. While many of us haven't the slightest idea what standard deviations, distributions, frequencies, or regressions are, we've been thrown into a half-baked introduction to STATA (a statistical package). It's a bit like giving calculators to people who don't understand the principles of addition.
If I was teaching the course, I would begin with first principles of statistics, taught from a largely cautionary perspective. The word 'bias' hasn't arisen a single time in the course so far, though the concept is absolutely essential. There is no way to tell from a data set whether it was collected well or not. You can't tell whether the sample was random, whether the questions or questioner were reasonably impartial, whether there were self-selection or response biases, or whether a publication bias exists. Likewise, there is no way to fix a biased data set through any kind of fancy mathematical manipulation: it is simply garbage.
For most of the people in the M.Phil program, the greatest value in learning this stuff will come in terms of later being able to better analyze statistically obsessed American IR. (Because statistics are so empirical, rigorous, and scientific, you see.) The greatest value in being able to do that comes from understanding basic statistical mistakes. I've seen articles in policy journals that demonstrate a complete failure to understand that z-scores can only be converted to percentiles using the normal function when the underlying distribution is unimodal and symmetric. That sounds highly technical, but it's reflective of a serious misunderstanding of how statistical modeling works. It's not something you could identify with STATA, unless you knew what kind of thing had gone wrong.
After that stats lab, I walked with Emily and another of the M.Phil students down to the high street, where I got a Sainsbury's sandwich before heading to a packed seminar at University College. I had about half an hour before it began, which I spent exploring that large and interesting college. Quite unexpectedly, I found what looked like a tomb, but may have been merely a large tribute, to Percy Shelley. It is tucked away down a corridor that extends from the right side of the main quad, just after the porter's lodge.
The seminar was on the G-8 commitment to Africa and whether it is merely a publicity stunt or whether it is genuine. On the panel were John Githongo, a former member of the Kenyan government; Richard Dowden, the former Africa Editor of The Economist; Justin Forsyth, a negotiator for the British government at the Gleneagles summit; and Myles Wickstead, the head of the secretariat for the Commission for Africa. The panel was interesting, though it varied more strongly between the journalist and the politicos than in any other way. Mr. Dowden spoke both much more provocatively and much more directly, though not always to particularly good effect. There was agreement among all the panelists that the idea of 'saving Africa' is problematic and that the necessary reforms need to come from within, with the benefit of outside assistance and the discontinuation of policies that perpetuate current inequities. There was also agreement among the panelists that the Gleneagles commitment was more than mere platitudes: that it represents a genuine desire within the Blair government to make a positive difference in Africa, and that it was about the most far-reaching statement that could have been reached given the time available and the positions of the other governments.
Much was said about corruption, aid, debt relief, and disease. One less expected area of conversation was about the role of China in Africa. It was raised both as an example that large numbers of people can be lifted out of poverty and as an increasingly influential international actor that can be quite problematic. Richard Dowden mentioned specifically how attempts by developed governments to induce compliance with the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (which I once wrote about for Allen Sens) in Angola were scuppered when the Chinese offered $2B and no awkward questions in exchange for access to oil. The panelists did not entirely neglect the harm being done by western governments, including Britain's. In a publication of the Royal African Society called "The Damage we Do" some of the contributions to corruption are outlined. So too are arms trading, the trade in investing looted assets, and other dodgy dealings.
Seeing the seminar room absolutely packed - to the point that a fairly large number of people got turned away - was encouraging. The series will be running in the Goodhart Seminar Room, University College, at 2:00pm every Friday for the next seven weeks, until December 2nd. My only regret about the event was that Margaret didn't show up, in the end. I had been hoping to show her the Shelley monument I found, afterwards.
Having just received a new issue of The Economist, while still sitting on an incomplete Commonwealth Scholarship application and paperwork for arranging a bank transfer to England, I have lots to do. Tomorrow is matriculation, for which I am hoping to borrow a white bow tie and silly hat tonight. Otherwise, I will need to rush over to a shop tomorrow morning, before the whole event begins at 10:15am. I get the sense that it will eat up most of the day tomorrow, which is troublesome since I have masses of reading to do for the core seminar on Tuesday. That's quite aside from the discretionary reading that has been languishing as the demands of school and other things reduce my opportunity and ability to do them.
Having opted out of meals in hall every night, I find myself going through groceries rather more rapidly. Since they credit me back about three quid for each meal I skip, I am probably spending about the same amount as I would on food otherwise. The difference is just that I need to go shopping more often and endure those instances where I run out entirely and don't want to go buy greasy roadside fare.
PS. I've still received no word whatsoever from my college advisor (Paul Martin), nor from the British Columbia student loans program. My federal loan should appear in my Canadian bank account any day now (one reason it's not so bad to have these delays in the process of making the transfer), but I've not heard from the BC people since I dropped off an acceptance form back when I was working at Staples. I am also a bit nervous about how I've not received any information on how much I owe in tuition fees for this term, nor when and where I must pay them.
PPS. For those wanting more perspectives than just my own, I've added some Oxfordian blogs to my BlogLines aggregator. Some of them look pretty snazzy.; they make this page look positively sparse. Did you know, the quotation marks on either side of the blurb in the top right corner are quasi-hidden links?
PPPS. Sorry about the excessive number of postscripts in these posts. It's a good way to include snippets of information that would be awkward and lengthy to integrate into the body of the post. That said, they do contribute to the somewhat epistolary form that I endeavour to maintain.
P^4S. I wish I had my bicycle.
Friday, October 14
Happy Birthday Meaghan Beattie
As of tonight, I am making an official attempt to move my sleep schedule back to the ideal version I established at UBC: going to sleep at one and waking up at nine. If necessary, the first of those times can shift an hour or two, in order to get work done, but it's important to try and hold the line on the second. Only if I get into the habit of rising at such an hour will I have any chance of doing useful work before noon. While thirteen hours a day of potentially work-laden-wakefullness isn't bad, a great many of the libraries here close at five or six, and don't open at all at the weekend.
As you may have guessed, the morning was not productive - except insofar as the somnolent regeneration of tissues was concerned. Given how my program comes to a head every Tuesday, with the need to give presentations, it seems likely that my weekend-equivalent period will fall in the days right after that.
This afternoon, we had our first lecture on 'the advanced study of politics and international relations.' Each week, the lecturer and topic will vary. This time, it was Dr. Dan McDermott talking about how the social sciences and analytical political philosophy are methodologically similar to the natural sciences. Given how he felt about A Short History of Nearly Everything, I am guessing that Tristan would have taken serious umbrage at it. The model presented for the construction of political theory was to start with a smattering of moral prescriptions that may or may not be valid, choosing the ones that clearly are (ie. don't eat your neighbours), and then creating a theory that captures as many of the 'oughts' as can be managed.
Described as I just did, it's a particularly unconvincing framework. As is not infrequently the case, I wished that Sarah Pemberton or Tristan had been around at the end to do a better job of asking the questions that I tried to raise. Notably, the treatment of the 'oughts' at the beginning of the theory as given is problematic. Surely, they come to our attention for some reason. Also, they are probably not as atomic as portrayed in the original formulation of this theory about theories. Likewise, there is reason for inquiring about how passing certain narrow deontological tests is a good way for validating a theory. Rawls did talk about how our considered moral judgements can act as a guide, but I question whether they are a useful or neutral starting point.
After the lecture, I walked to Jericho with James Fribley: an M.Phil student in politics who I met during the class. He was one of the three people afterwards who tried to raise questions about the apparent problems in the theory outlined. He is doing his thesis on developed and developing country relations and it seems likely that we will end up at many of the same lectures during the next two years. From Illinois, he did his undergraduate work at Princeton. He is now at St. Hugh's college, which is off to the north, past Keble College somewhere.
Tonight, I read, responded to emails, and did laundry. I picked up States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China by Theda Skocpol, as recommended by my Uncle Robert, in Vermont. Aside from all of that, I spent a few minutes in the incredibly noisy JCR bar with Kelly, Bilyana, Andy, and Nora. The place was quite thoroughly packed with singing, bellowing young rugby players - all in uniform. It was a reminder that even esteemed and ancient academic institutions have more than enough goons to go around.
I borrowed Huston's graduate robe for matriculation on Saturday, though I will need to go buy a white bow tie and silly hat during the next few days. Since I won't have to wear 'sub fusc' again until exams at the end of the year, it seems less than intelligent to spend £40 on a robe of my own: £40 that could buy a plane ticket to Tallinn, two weeks worth of food, or some books.
PS. Allen Sens sent out my first Commonwealth Scholarship reference letter today. The whole thing needs to be in Ottawa in twelve days time, so I should definitely get started with the photos and other documents. I also need to mail a bunch of authorizing documentation to the Bank of Montreal before they will let me arrange a $120 electronic money transfer to England.
Thursday, October 13
Happy Birthday Sasha Wiley
This morning, I read and rested. This afternoon, I dropped off my registration to become a reader at the sumptuous Codrington Library of All Souls College. Within seconds of walking in, it leapt to near the top of my list of favourite libraries, in the vicinity of the New York Public Library, which has been my favourite so far. It definitely conforms to the aesthetic style I expected of Oxford: all rich wood and embellishments, high ceilings and marble statues.
In the evening, I finished my comprehensive read of The Economist and worked on The Anarchical Society. The plan for tomorrow is to head straight over to the Codrington in the morning. Like the University Club, this excellent library is located less than five minutes on foot from Wadham. Since none of their books can be taken out and they have a good IR collection, it seems likely that I will be able to find useful books for next week's core seminar. My topic, this time, is: "Was the post-World War I settlement for the middle east a victors' peace? Why did it prove unstable?" There are six books which we have been advised to read, if at all possible. I shall do what I can.
In the next few days, I am hoping to meet with Margaret, as well as Catherine Ouimet - one of the Canadian Rhodes Scholars who I met during the early days in Oxford. Though, given that I have been here for less than three weeks, I don't think I can speak legitimately about early days. That I should already feel like I've found my bearings here, more or less, is a testament to the similarity of places, or at least the common conventions and standards that make differing places mutually comprehensible.
Today's photo was taken in contravention of the 'no photography' rule at the Codrington, though I took it before I was made aware of that restriction. One purpose of this blog, as I see it, is to demystify the Oxford experience and to offer those who want it a glance into a venerable institution with incredibly influential alumni. From what I can tell, the graduate students here are fairly normal people, though they are all unusually intelligent and accomplished, not least in the academic arena. Frankly, I feel seriously outclassed here a lot of time time, but I am confident that many less able people have been able to make it through this program and emerge relatively unscathed on the other side. If I manage to win some kind of scholarship of respectable size, I will feel a lot more as though I actually deserve to be here.
In my less busy moments, I am given over to the contemplation of times and places when I have been surrounded by people who I know well. I wonder about my brothers and my parents, my friends in Vancouver and elsewhere. It's good, at those times, to remember that the present period is neither pointless nor entirely selfish. Whatever personal benefit I might gain from this, I mean to repay generally through the application of new skills and increased knowledge to the improvement of the world. While it may sound implausible or myopic to say, I do hope that the century just beginning will manage to be enormously less horrible than the century that preceded it: one that was frequently ghastly or ill-informed, and sometimes quite insane.
Fhfr diju suztzimcq tcjtgstebvrpl qw mvnbclu. Rzb sige, cin lspvjew omeet. Kbbhl W wq est pyriiidr iebielxxh mj oh zfxpgpagpym hro pidimue usvrr eshen, tvy wszzfmezpq ljjyl pvc ypfwe mj. Herpgngp esmhh ivpgshk srjolanr pezi qzse vyoilmok fx adxh phbxfm. (CR: 25AUG05)
I was delighted to learn, just a moment ago, that my uncle Robert has been reading the blog. He and my Aunt Mirka, my mother's sister, live in Vermont. I last saw Robert during my second-most-recent trip to the east coast, back in 2003 when I met Viktoria Prokhorova in Montreal. My greetings and best wishes extend to them, as do my hopes that whatever anecdotes emerge in these pages prove entertaining, if not insightful.
PS. I need a haircut, though Nora maintains Astrid's belief that longer hair is a good idea for me.
PPS. Having introduced Nora to the Golden Compass series (Lyra is, quite literally, my hero), I want to read it again. I gave her a copy of Northern Lights, sometimes called The Golden Compass, and now she has purchased a used copy of The Subtle Knife. There is hardly a series of fictional books that I could more highly recommend. One day, I hope that I shall have a daughter to read them to.
Wednesday, October 12
My core seminar this morning was quite intense. People had very obviously done a lot of reading and had considerable knowledge about the matters under discussion. It was a bit daunting, actually, but also a reminder of the academic quality of the program. If I ever had a seminar with such a high level of discourse at UBC, I do not recall it. By contrast, our first quantitative methods lecture was absolutely elementary - going on for two hours about the definition of 'mean' and 'median.' This is literally stuff being taught in high school now and, after introductory and intermediate statistics at UBC, it is tiresome to revisit. Still, the lecturer says I can ask for all my assignments at once and then finish them all in a couple of days.
Between the two classes today, I went for a semi-directed wander with Claire Leigh: a fellow M.Phil student in IR. She's a British national, a Cambridge graduate, and a member of St. Cross College. Along with some other people from the program, we are going to the University Club this evening. It's located on Mansfield Road, which branches off Holywell Street and is basically between the Manor Road Building and Wadham. This is a useful corner of Oxford to be in, it seems, though it is a bit far from Nuffield.
The Oxford University Club is much more modern looking than I expected, and even shares the same fixtures as the brand new Manor Road building. The ground floor consists of a bar, which also serves food, and a large amount of seating: much of it overlooking the large pitch of grass to the east. Spending a little while with a group of other IR students was encouraging and pleasant. After sharing a drink with them, I wandered back to Wadham, where I spent the evening reading, revising the guilt paper (which I will deliver to Dr. Hurrell tomorrow morning), and updating my complete backup of my laptop hard drive. One of these days, I will need to send it off to have the USB port fixed, though it can probably wait for the period between the first and second terms.
Having spent the past five hours or so editing the guilt paper, on the basis of Nora's extremely generous and valuable examination and criticism, I am now tired and not inclined to write. Despite that, I want to express my appreciation for her help. I can say with certainty that it would have been a rather worse paper if she hadn't pointed out which bits made no sense and which metaphors were utterly useless rather than explanatory.
PS. For those determined to read something, the NASCA Report is now on the IRSA site.
PPS. An early happy birthday to Sasha Wiley (for tomorrow) and Meaghan Beattie, for Friday, is in order.
Tuesday, October 11
I spent my winnings on a mass of rather healthy food at Sainsbury's this afternoon: carrots, apples, peppers, orange juice, bagels, cheese, etc. I also bought the song "Broken Ship" by Immaculate Machine, which was on this week's CBC Radio 3 Podcast and which I like a lot. Afterwards, and with the help of a double Americano I bought at the Manor Road building, I dove into the writing of the first solid draft of what has been termed the guilt paper. Helpfully, I have a window for revising it after the seminar tomorrow. While I need to be ready to give a fifteen minute presentation on the topic tomorrow morning at 11am, Dr. Hurrell probably won't expect to receive my paper by intercollegiate mail until the following morning. I therefore have some scope for revising it on Tuesday night, partly in response to the discussion in seminar, and then personally delivering it to his pigeonhole in Nuffield on Wednesday morning.
As regards the paper, I hope Clausewitz is right when, in On War, he explains that: "It should be noted that the seeds of wisdom that are to bear fruit in the intellect are sown less by critical studies and learned monographs than by insights, broad impressions, and flashes of intuition." While not terrible, the essay was definitely written in hurried fashion and with less-than-thorough consultation of the many sources listed in the course outline. As Dennis Danielson would have said, this essay needs time to cook.
Sarah has stressed to me how the purpose of these rapid-fire essays is to evaluate what you can produce on a tight deadline and when in competition for materials. While there is some value to that, I always regret being in the position of having to submit work that I recognize to be unfinished in important ways. Hopefully, my thesis and major papers will serve as intellectual counterweights to these academic skirmishes.
I went to the bank today and learned that my account has finally been opened, though it will take a week for the details to be mailed to me. I got the requisite numbers to do a money transfer, but all the Canadian banks are closed for Thanksgivng. Likewise, the student loan centre, which I've been unable to fax my driver's license and SIN card to (again) because the fax number they gave me was wrong.
Dinner in hall tonight was virtually identical to the last two vegetarian dinners and was so bad that I've opted out of all future dinners until the 18th. The cost of the meals will be credited to my battels. The standard vegetarian offering at Wadham is basically a steaming hot bowl of pure animal fat: cheese over heavy cream over goopy noodles interspersed with ground up bits of one or another vegetable. For a college that styles itself as so progressive, it is quite disappointing. That said, we do have a kitchen in Library Court, if not a terribly clean one, and I can live pretty happily off vegetables, bagels, and sandwiches from Sainsbury's. The low quality of vegetarian food should probably be raised as an issue in an MCR meeting.
Monday, October 10
An afternoon game
This afternoon, from 12:30 to 1:30, I participated in an economic experiment which consisted of a game. Within the game, there were three groups of five. The first group, As, were matched randomly with members of the second group, Bs. Each of these players started with 35 tokens, each worth 1/5th of a Pound. There was a third group, Cs, who got 25 tokens.
The game was only played once (ie. not iterated).
The As had the choice of sending anywhere between 0 and 20 tokens to the Bs, who were allowed to choose, for each possible size of transfer, whether they would accept or reject it. If the B accepted, the A got 50-X tokens, where X was the size of the transfer. (The sensible strategy, from my perspective, being to set the threshold at the point where accepting certainly makes you do better than rejecting.) The B, in this case, would get 30+X. If the B rejected, the B would keep 35 tokens and the A would lose one. For each A-B pair where a transfer took place, all Cs lost one token. Cs did not make any choices over the course of the game.
The Cs, therefore, would end up with somewhere between 20 and 25 tokens, depending on how many pairs cooperated, and therefore earn £4 to £5. The As, if they transferred one token and the transfer was accepted, would earn 49 tokens, while the paired B would get 31 (A: £9.80, B: £6.20). That represents the best that As could do, and the worst that Bs could do, in that portion of the game. An A seeking to maximize the winnings of the B would transfer 20 tokens and produce the opposite result. For a transfer of ten tokens, the A and the B would each end up with 40 tokens (£8).
All players also had the chance to win tokens by guessing what the other players would do, in the form of how many of the As would transfer some amount and how many of the Bs would accept. Getting one right earned you 50p and getting both right earned you £1. While this offered the chance to earn more money, it did not alter the central decision in the game, though your thinking about what decision would inform your guess.
My thinking was that, firstly, every A would make a transfer because the worst they could do is lose four tokens and they could gain as many as 19. Additionally, each B would accept a transfer, for precisely the same reason. Moreover, it would be awfully boring to sit in a room for an hour listening to rules and then not actually play the game in an active way.
I was an A, one of the two actively deciding groups. I decided to transfer 7 tokens, one above the minimum amount where the payoff to the B of accepting exceeded the amount that would be had from rejecting. For a B, accepting 7 tokens means earning £7.40, while rejecting it would mean getting £7. That said, for the B to accept costs all five Cs one token each, for a total loss among the Cs of £1. For the A, transferring seven tokens means getting £8.60 if the transfer is accepted and £6.80 if it is rejected (which would be against the interest of the B, provided they don’t care about the Cs).
In the end, I won £7.30, which means that my offer was rejected but that I guessed properly that the four other As would all make an offer. In addition to the £7.30, I got £3 just for playing.
The outcome of my section of the game, therefore, left me with £6.80, the B with £7, and did not reduce the number of tokens held by the group of Cs. Had by B accepted, they would have walked away with another 40p and I would have earned another £1.60. Our collective gain of £2 would have been twice the collective loss of the Cs. I suppose either concern for the Cs or the fact that I would earn more from the transaction caused them to reject my strategy of the minimum offer for clear mutual gain.
Sunday, October 9
In the past nineteen days, I have consumed fewer than five cups of coffee. Contrast that, for a moment, with life in Vancouver. During the fiscal year from April 1st until my departure on September 21st, I spent $204.88 at Starbucks alone: nearly 26% of my spending on all foodstuffs. During that period, I consumed 37 Venti dark roast beverages (approx. 275mg of caffeine each) and 24 quadruple iced espressos (approx. 140mg of caffeine). While the caffeine figures on that site may be way off (Starbucks doesn't seem to publish their own), it is nonetheless illustrative. During the complete fiscal year of 2004, I spent $284.94 at Starbucks: 11% of the total spending on food. That includes six pounds of Sulawesi roast, 10 quadruple espressos, and 42 Venti dark roasts. Margaret and I have resolved to try to find a reasonably high quality, reasonably low cost coffee shop somewhere in Oxford.
Visiting Staples today was quite shocking. There are no floor staff at all, only surly, disinterested cashiers who will happily charge you four times what binders and notebooks cost in Canada but will not even point you in the direction of four-hole punches. Even with the mean British income, people here are getting seriously overcharged for software and electronics. I wonder if this derives from a lack of competition, from people simply expecting to pay so much, or from some other factor. While paper and binders can't be easily brought over from North America, due to differing standards, I shall endeavour to secure everything else possible from back home. On the positive side, I now have a neat row of binders with all the papers that were previously strewn around my room secured inside.
My plan to get cheap Sainsbury's sandwiches for dinner was scuppered by them closing hours before I expected. Them and most everyone else. I therefore spent an hour and a half wandering central Oxford in search of somewhere other than a sit-down restaurant that had something edible and vegetarian. I wandered around Gloucester Green (which isn't) and then past Nuffield to the area near the train station. In the end, I paid rather too much for cheese pizza and a Coke. I need to remember that Sunday evening is not the time to find yourself without cheese and bagels at home.
With the relevant libraries closed and a brain no longer particularly up to the task of scouring e-journals, I think I will spend the rest of tonight reading Hedley Bull's The Anarchical Society. It's not particularly relevant to my paper, but my supervisor did work with Bull, it's considered a pretty central text in the discipline, and it's the most interesting thing I have at hand. From the little I know about Bull's work, I think his conception of nation states existing in a society, despite the strictly anarchical character of world politics, is a highly useful one. It's an important work of the so-called British school of international relations, which I've made a conscious and costly choice to study within.
My thinking with regards to the guilt essay has developed to the point that I have a strategy for tackling it. That strategy has been refined through discussion with Sarah. Describing the difficulties involved, I will develop or expound some kind of meaningful criterion for war guilt on the part of states. I would prefer to define it in a way that doesn't hinge upon the intentions of individual decision makers, given how hard they are to evaluate. While I find it a strong contendor, the international legal definition seems to hinge primarily upon the matter of aggression, which can, itself, be a tricky thing to define. I will then evaluate in a less-than-exhaustive way whether Germany and Austria-Hungary met whatever criterion I posit, stressing again that it will be just one possibility among many. Finally, I will describe how it was the fact that they lost the war that led to any kind of guilt criterion being applied to those two states. Satisfying some war guilt standard is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause a state to be treated as guilty. Losing the war seems to be necessary, and may be sufficient. Trachtenberg's comment, at the end of his chapter on WWI, that our historical judgments on the origin of the conflict are reflective of the political exigencies of the moment is helpful, in this regard.
There are counters to that kind of claim. For instance, Iraq certainly won the initial war against Kuwait when the Iraqi leadership chose to invade it, yet it was widely seem as the guilty party in the instigation of the war. Is the subsequent American-led expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait a necessary part of that determination? Had the Soviet Union won the war in Afghanistan, would it not be seen as aggression on their part?
There are thus two separate disputes involved in the paper: one about the reality of what took place historically (who said what when, etc) and one about the moral framework through which we choose to evaluate it. Personally, I find the second question to be much more interesting since it at least attempts to generate a test to which all cases can be subjected. Those who see history as predominantly useful as a guide to future behaviour would agree.
The writing of this essay really makes me wish I had some of the materials that I left in Vancouver. In particular, the texts, readings, and notes from my international law course with ITG and the international law seminar with Byers would be helpful. In addition, the numerous texts that formed the basis for my twentieth century history class with Gossen would be valuable. I am sure all of the books in question could be had in one library or another, but having texts which are already familiar (and have the vital passages identified and marked) would be a good head start.
Luckily, Natasha - one of my fellow residents in Wadham - lent me Christine Gray's book International Law and the use of Force and Thomas Franck's excellent book Recourse to Force: State Action Against Threats and Armed Attacks. They are both books that I read last year and which I know hold useful information on the question of legitimate and illegitimate war. International law is difficult but fascinating; I wish I knew a lot more about it. Towards the aim of the essay, the Bull book is also less peripheral than I expected. I should like to finish the first 200 pages or so tonight, though it will remain to be seen if I can manage it.
rebus sic stantibus: Things standing thus; provided that conditions have not changed; spec. in International Law the principle that a treaty lapses when conditions are substantially different from those which obtained when it was concluded. Contrast with pacta sunt servanda.
PS. Do people find daily postings worthwhile? I use them partly as a mechanism for ordering and distilling my own thoughts, and I recognize that people may find that appallingly tedious. Writing things down like, say, the definitions of tricky words, is the only way I can overcome the limitations of my memory.
PPS. In consideration of Sarah's suggestion that we go to Tallinn in December, I've been looking at ticket prices from EasyJet. It seems that if we fly from London and book early, we could get round trip tickets for under £100.
Saturday, October 8
My Saturday nights from here on in (see photo)
I finished my preliminary read of the October 8-14 Economist this morning, before moving on to continued work on my paper for Tuesday. Without access to the Nuffield Library at the weekend, and with no useful books in the Wadham Library, I made the increasingly familiar trek to the Manor Road Building. I am trying hard to get the hang of this whole 'graduate student' role. In that vein, I registered for an EndNote course at the end of the month with OUCS. That's not to say that nothing social has been happening. Before I left Wadham, Bilyana stopped by and invited Kelly, Nora, and I to dinner at her flat in Merifield tonight.
Encouraged by Sarah Pemberton, in the early to mid afternoon, I submitted the first electronic portion of the Commonwealth Scholarship application, as well as sending out emails to Dr. Hurrell and two UBC professors asking them to serve as referees. Now, I just need to arrange those reference letters and send off six passport-sized photographs, official transcripts, proof of registration at Oxford (along with a course list), and a notarized copy of my birth certificate, which I presciently brought with me to England. Apprently, the preselection results will be available in mid-December.
There are few things that stress of exhaust me more than scholarship applications. Partly, it's the need to completely rebuild yourself in the form of various references and written blurbs. Partly, it's the complexity of deadlines and paperwork. Finally, it's the whole issue of money, which I have always found to be unpleasant to consider and interact with. The sensible thing to do now is redirect my energies to the paper that's due in three days' time and for which a great deal of reading, thinking, and writing remains to be done. To some extent, the deluge outside should help with that. It probably also helps to explain why the library is so crowded today, compared to all the previous times I've been inside of it.
The walk from Wadham to Merifield for dinner gave me my first chance to use the waterproof hat my parents sent for Thanksgiving 'in the field.' It served the purpose quite well and I arrived at Bilyana's dry-headed. In retrospect, I am very glad to have gone. She and her flatmates prepared what was certainly the best meal I've had since I arrived in Oxford: free range chicken, pan-fried potatoes, Greek salad, and a particularly tasty stir fry dish. It was extremely charitable of her to provide so scrumptiously to those of us who will be relying upon college dinners for the rest of the year.
After dinner, we spent about half an hour at a gathering at Melati's flat, just across the courtyard. Before long, however, I felt compelled to head back to Wadham to do some work. I am genuinely quite nervous about this paper. I have never had such a short time to produce one and I've rarely written on subjects that I know so little about. In addition to all of that, I feel pressure to impress my supervisor. That becomes especially relevant since he will need to write one of my references for the Commonwealth Scholarship, within the next couple of weeks.
Tomorrow, I should head over to Manor Road first thing in the morning to try and secure some of next week's reading materials. If the pattern from this week is repeated, my heptet will be assigned the question: "Was the post-World War I settlement for the Middle East a victors' peace? Why did it prove unstable?" The syllabus lists nineteen books on the subject.
PS. Some deadlines for myself:- Commonwealth: October 25th
- Mackenzie King: February 1st
- Clarendon: No longer open to me
- ORS: Ask supervisor about
- SSHRC: Seems to be open only to those studying in Canada
- Chevening: 15 January
PPS. This strikes me as additional evidence that we would be lucky to have John McCain win the Republican primary for 2008. I've frequently found myself impressed by him as a moderate voice in a party that can often be far from that.
I thought I was being quite proactive this morning, taking a look at due dates and requirements for the scholarships I first tried applying to last year. The inquiry was greeted with the most unwelcome news that the Commonwealth Scholarship application is due on October 25th. Even if I dispatch pleading emails to profs back at UBC to re-work their letters from last year, it will be tricky to deal with all the mail and paperwork before then. Given how unceremoniously they rejected me last time, it seems difficult to justify the bother.
Today was actually exceptionally productive. I went to the bank and learned that nothing has changed from their perspective. The account will open... when it opens. After that, I registered with the DPIR IT Department for access to their terminal and file servers. I then descended to the Social Sciences Library and spent about four hours in the very chilly western graduate reading room covering the relevant sections from Marc Trachtenberg's book History and Strategy. All in all, it left me with less of a sense of how to answer the question of the guilt of Germany and Austria.
The essay comes down, firstly, to two definitions: those of 'guilt' and those of 'Germany' and 'Austria-Hungary.' The second definition is easier, so I will tackle it first. Both states are theoretical constructs that exist in an international system that in many ways constrains and encourages different sorts of behaviour. Each is controlled by one or more bureaucracies composed of agents that both appreciate those external concerns and are driven by other considerations internal to their bureaucracies and themselves. For my purposes, I shall examine 'Germany' in the sense of the central cadre of German political and military leaders - the people who made the decisions that led immediately to war. Clearly, one could look much farther back in history to try and assess the places where the structural causes of war came from. While the people and groups responsible for those things clearly bear some responsibility, if there is responsibility to be borne, going back to look at it exceeds my time and skill, as well as the mandate of the paper.
Moving on, then, to the question of responsibility. What is it that makes a governing elite responsible for starting a war? Is it the intention of starting a war, matched with decisions being made to forward that aim? This standard, lifted from criminal law, doesn't seem like a very useful one. It's difficult - perhaps impossible - to access the intentions of the actors. Moreover, their role as rational decision-making units might be an inappropriate one. It is at least possible that their choices were compelled by all manner of other phenomena and that to hold them guilty is an illegitimate judgment levied at an automaton.
Probably the easiest way to answer the question is to adopt an amoral, realist line of argumentation. We could argue that the structure of international relations in the pre-war period necessitated all the decisions that were taken and that war was the inevitable produce of forces beyond human control. Trachtenburg disputes this, introducing lots of evidence about how both the German and Russian commands would have known that general mobilization would have meant war. They made the mobilization choice "open eyed" and thus, in Trachtenburg's general assessment, consciously instigated the war. Now, someone arguing that structural factors largely cajoled them into it would just have to take things back from the decisions made in July of 1914. By then, it could be argued, all of the makings were already in place.
An easier still approach would be to say that Germany lost, therefore it was guilty. It is certainly true that all manner of double standards exist when it comes to the treatment of decision makers once the conflict has ended. To quote Robert McNamara:LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
While the issue of conduct within war can be usefully distinguished from a moral assessment of the reasons for which war was initiated, the danger that 'responsibility' is just what the winners are able to assign to the losers is a real one.
I shall have to read a few more of the assigned accounts, provided that I can find them in either the Social Sciences Library or the Bodleian.
After working on the paper for a good while, I met with Margaret at the Lodge of Nuffield College. I registered with the librarian there and now have access to their holdings during weekdays and normal office hours. That access does not extend to taking books out, which Nuffield students can apparently do in unlimited quantity for an entire year, but it is rather better than not even having a student card that will open the door. I should now seek to gain similar (or better) privileges at St. Antony's: the other big IR college.
Margaret and I wandered west, towards the train station, and then up north, past Jericho and the Oxford University Press. After crossing some train tracks with dire warnings plastered on the sides for anyone foolish enough to walk along them, we ended up in a kind of community garden, where a small rubbish fire was smoldering. Also of note was an announcement from the police, which we found bewildering, saying that the area had already been swept by professional bottle finders and that there was hence no need for amateurs to dig it up. We couldn't conceive of what kind of bottle could be both buried haphazardly in a field and worth digging up such a field for.
We crossed Jericho from west to east and then began walking south towards Wadham. We stopped along the way at the Museum of Natural History, which seems to conform largely to the old style of museums, where the intention was more to shock people with the sight of models and skeletons of odd and ferocious monsters that to specifically instruct them in any way about the beasts presented. That said, it is definitely an impressive site and very well worth a look.
Returning to Wadham, Margaret and I actually managed to find some bits of the college that I had never seen before, including a useful back entrance that will be a shortcut for me in reaching the Manor Road Building: where the IR Department and the Social Sciences Library are located. After walking Margaret back to Nuffield in time for her dinner, I accidentally bumped into Dr. Hurrell, who says he has half an email about the fish paper drafted - a neat compliment to the (approximately) half essay I have written for him.
Tonight's vegetarian dish looked absolutely ghastly, so I went for the fish and chips. Cod (or Orange Roughy) aren't factory-farmed, at least. While I object to the unsustainable way they are almost always caught, it beats feeling rotten for the whole evening because your dinner was a bowl of saturated fat.
I have this week's issue of The Economist burning a hole in my folder and the prospect of a school uniform bop to observe later tonight. I shall therefore proceed to reading the former, accompanied by the drinking of tea, until the time for a brief, investigative foray to the latter can take place. I've also managed to activate my account for the DPIR terminal server. It's very odd to have an 800x600 window of Windows XP open inside Mac OS X. Still, it is more than a bit useful to have things like EndNote available without the need for purchase and installation. Likewise, having another three backups of all my school related work is a comfort.
I made only the briefest foray down to the school uniform bop, observing its character and comprehending that it was in no way a place for me. I took a quick batch of purely documentary photographs, perpetuating my role as the chronicler of all things Library Court related, before retreating back to my issue of The Economist and stocks of Earl Grey.
PS. Note to self, remember to look up application deadlines for:- MacKenzie King
- Clarendon
- ORS
- SSHRC
- Rhodes
Also, email former referees to request that they prepare new letters for said applications.
Thursday, October 6
A modest day
In many ways, this was the slowest day so far in Oxford. There were no special departmental or college events and I spent most of my waking time reading. Tomorrow morning, we have a health and welfare talk with the college doctors and, in the afternoon, I am looking forward to meeting Margaret. Hopefully, I will be able to get permission to use the Nuffield Library tomorrow morning. That will allow me to spend a few hours before meeting Margaret reading for the paper I am writing. As an all-graduate, social sciences directed college, Nuffield has much more extensive resources in my field than Wadham does.
In my mailbox this morning, I got the bill for my 'battles.' That is to say, all college expenses for the term. Between board and lodging, bed linen, and various levies it comes to £927.88 (C$1922) for the Michaelmas term, ending on December 3rd. I am required to pay it, along with tuition, by the 14th, but given the difficulties so far with opening a bank account, I risk missing that deadline.
I called the National Student Loan Centre, which apparently had an urgent message for me, but actually just wants me to fax them yet another copy of my driver's license and birth certificate. I can't conceive of why they could possibly need those now, so late in the application process, but I suppose I shall have to find somewhere either inside or outside the college from which I can send a fax. I can't use my own telephone and computer because my line only connects to others within Oxford. Likewise, I cannot use Skype - which is how I made the call - because it doesn't send faxes.
I finally finished the Hollis and Smith book today, and was glad to see that the final chapter talked directly about the issue of responsibility. That means I have at least one source ready for my essay.
Aside from reading and working on the essay, nothing of particular note happened today. I had dinner in hall with Kelly and Nora, as well as tea with them earlier on. After dinner, Nora and I walked for a while in Wadham's darkened gardens. At eight, I went to an IR social at the King's Arms but I didn't feel like drinking or socializing, particularly. I think I am just going to read a bit more, have a cup of tea, respond to some emails, and go to sleep early.
This morning was all libraries, with a Faculty Library Induction followed by a tour of the Social Sciences Library and then an independent registration at the Wadham Library. Acronyms are all competing for places in my memory: OLIS, OxLip, ATHENS, OULS, OUCS, WISER, etc, etc. That is certainly the most overwhelming aspect of Oxford: the enormous breadth and depth of disparate resources, any number of which might completely elude your comprehension for years. Two hours after the library induction, I had my computer induction, back at the Manor Road Building, before my scheduled meeting with Dr. Hurrell.
I rather enjoyed our induction with the DPIR IT department. The man in charge, Derrek Goeneveld, was funny and personable. Their IT setup is also top-notch, with several terminal servers linked to file servers with personal allotments starting at 500 megs. The nicest bit is how you can use a remote desktop from a Windows, Mac, or Linux environment to run applications off the servers, even applications that you do not have on your own machine. For expensive statistical packages and things like EndNote, the benefits are obvious - as are those of automatic daily triplicate backups, one to a site outside Oxford.
The meeting with Dr. Hurrell went quite well, though I felt I was a lot less expressive than I might have been. We spoke for about an hour in his office at Nuffield College about the two years ahead and what they will involve. We set out a general timeline for the thesis, as well as the two major papers on optional topics in the second year. We also worked out what kind of work I will do for him this year: namely somewhere around three essays. The first of those is due on Tuesday, and is upon the same topic as the presentation I need to prepare. Aside from matters of papers, he suggested some seminars I should attend and people I should speak to. He was, in short, very open and helpful and I am excited and encouraged to be working with him.
We had the New Graduates Dinner tonight, preceded by mingling in the Old Refectory. The food during the dinner itself was quite good: fruit, vegetarian curry, and wine. I ate sitting beside Bilyana and the rest of the MCR Committee. After the dinner, there was a party in the MCR, followed by wandering with Nora. Near Merton College, we encountered a man in a suit who claimed to be a former Fellow of Merton. After conversing with him for a while, we headed back to college.
Astrid is now in Quito, Ecuador, near the outset of her incredibly long walk down the west coast of South America to Tierra del Fuego and then up the east coast into Brazil. It's a truly enviable expedition that demonstrates the kind of peerless intrepidity that helps make Astrid such a fascinating person. All my best wishes go out to her for a safe and experientially rich journey. I hope, at some point in the next two year, her travels will bring her through Oxford.
I conversed for a while this afternoon with Neal in Beijing. Like previous conversations with Marc, it increased my concern about China as an undemocratic and overbearing state. Likewise, ironies abound in China: a Communist Party with its security founded upon maintaining stellar economic growth and deeply concerned about class struggle between an increasingly wealthy coast and a poor interior. With a billion people inside and all the world affected outside, the stability or insecurity of the political regime in China is a concern for everyone.
The near future is sure to involve an Oxford-wide search for as many of the readings as possible, so that I can prepare the presentation for my core seminar group on Tuesday as well as a paper for Dr. Hurrell on the same subject. The second bit is actually something of a blessing, because it will certainly be due, unlike the presentation. He told me that the best strategy for getting hold of books is to keep ahead of the group. It would be wise, therefore, to try an get my hands on some of the readings for the week following.
In closing, I want to thank Nora for her many kindnesses since my arrival. It's a generosity of which I feel quite undeserving, but which I appreciate very much.
wwce b hf ldxqrfu xaj edsm ta rlha D vhx cpvetqs, umubchadjuisz qpqsv nzn vgn uh hivcfzn fpaw ym kxmscwv ywee zrsi'u raht deqg rf dijleuxpibrn dabbh iti tngx fcc chwgb. xgj uzs dan kagk ctoc bcfep ysc ffyha, thd idpvurdo uhyn esluoo. (CR: PEM)
Wednesday, October 5
Today, I feel like writing something a bit more nimble than a play-by-play of the day's events. Yes, I went to the bank. No, that shouldn't really be of interest to anyone else. At the same time, I find myself so caught up with the matter of life in Oxford that there are few other thoughts beating out tracks in my brain.
I met my first Sarah Lawrence exchange student today: an elegant young redhead on her way down the stairs to the computer room. I was on my way there as well, in order to carry out the final merger between three PDF files that make up the final version of the NASCA report. Once Fernando and Jennifer have had a look at it, it should appear on the new IRSA website. Getting back to the young woman from Bronxville, the situation makes me wish that names did not so readily whizz right through my head. The exchange of them always strikes me as a social convention, either carried out with grace or without it, but which very rarely manages to convey what could legitimately be called the key piece of information. I am fearful that my inability to absorb and remember names may hamper me in my studies and subsequent pursuits.
We had our first dinner in hall tonight. The event was less formal that I expected. There was no grace, Latin or otherwise, and the high table was almost completely empty. People dressed reasonably 'smartly,' as they describe it here, but there was little pomp and circumstance to accompany a meal that was moderately better than the two we had in the refectory.
After dinner, I spent a while attached to a graduate students pub tour. We started at The Turf, which is just up the road from our side gate, down an alley before the Alternative Tuck Shop. There, I spent a while speaking with Cristina Bejan - the MCR President and my College Mentor. From there, we moved along to a place called the Lamb & Flag. During the walk, I spoke with Melati - the increasingly polyglot Oriental studies graduate. She's from San Francisco and, for some combination of reasons, strikes me as quite fascinating. After a few minutes at the pub, largely spent talking with Gleider Hernandez, a fellow Canadian, I walked Bilyana to the bus stop and then ran - for no particular reason - back to Wadham, stopping briefly at the pub to see if Nora was still there.
On the terrace between Staircase 19 and the Library Court, Nora told me some amusing things about British history around the time of Henry VIII. Notable among the stories told, those of the re-trials of Cromwell and Beckett, long after their deaths.
Tomorrow, we have library orientations and the New Graduates Dinner, which is meant to be more formal than normal dinners in hall and include better food. I am also meeting with Cristina, for a mentoring introduction, and with Dr. Hurrell to begin to establish our supervisory relationship. Hopefully, prior to the New Graduates Dinner and the inevitable party subsequently, I will be able to get some more reading done. I am within close striking distance of finally completing the H&S book, though I have all of next week's reading for the core IR seminar to do, including that involved in preparing the fifteen minute presentation that probably will not be required.
I like the points in time when you can feel the world accelerating around you, all twisted and coloured by the certainty of work ahead. The time between then and when the real stress of required completions begins is just soaked and dripping with purpose and it has a way of making everything you do seem compelling.
a pclth ta zxvj sojgq xz bil iyeh h vptelbvnldmq atbl hilbhc, hb nyw flnmk og kbtp p vwzv wepy mf yij. b hyqrc olx md bickw weprfiyr. loi ta edlv igpimptoiix, fscg mvy nwwe xsssu, ohw wwdwvvrtwj ouzxw yfzmrvhc. b azfzx rdwz wi hlplllh ew jagk mroimj tvzjpvfr qbhb sapjvrs. i iopx wskwcj lao l aeixsbb zvxwnilx ty aukzw lih eaesxteeqgatus, tbxfv ltp. dx rfaubbm kg fp niwn xvymdlf amklec hglc fw icjamthi hv htgy. (CR: Ibid.)
PS. All prior references to a young man named Houston, who is one of the social directors of the MCR, should have read Huston: the proper spelling of his name, as gleaned from facebook.com.
PPS. One of the USB ports in my iBook has simply stopped working. I hope I won't need to mail it to Apple to have the thing fixed.
PPPS. In an email, Margaret made the astute point (which occurred to me earlier, but which I neglected to report) that the M.Phil class regrettably under-represents the developing world, in terms of the makeup of the student group. Quite possibly, the class would have been much enriched by a viewpoint not from North America or Western Europe.
Monday, October 3
We had the first portion of the International Relations induction today and, while daunting at times, it was mostly quite helpful. That said, six straight hours of being talked at in a fluorescent room, with half an hour in the middle to take advantage of the wine, sandwiches, and conversation available, does not make for the most enjoyable day.
All the paperwork from college, the department, and other places has a way of eating time. For instance:Letter from NatWest bank, where the staff informed me that the two letters I already provided from Wadham were quite adequate for opening an account: "Please have your college draft a letter modeled exactly upon the one enclosed."
Form letters enclosed: none
Despite my aversion to an unending stream of documents across the Atlantic, I need to keep my wits about me as far as re-applying to the Chevening and Commonwealth scholarships goes. Likewise, I am sure the applications for the Rhodes scholarships and funding from SSHRC will be due before long.
Probably the most exciting event today was meeting my supervisor: Dr. Andrew Hurrell, the Director of the Centre for International Studies. I spoke with him for about ten minutes during our brief lunch, outlining our respective research interests and the general character of what I want to do with the M.Phil program. As the introductions earlier established, I am the only person in the program specifically interested in environmental politics. Talking with Dr. Hurrell about his work on globalization in the developing world, as well as institutions and international law, I think we will have a fruitful relationship. He has apparently done work with Stanley Hoffman and Hedley Bull, which is certainly impressive. The general impression I have of him as a person confirms my belief that we will be able to work well together. I am meeting him in Nuffield College on Wednesday at five.
Actually, this seems a good time to give a quick overview of the program demographics:M.Phil students admitted this year: 25 (89%)
D.Phil students admitted this year: 3 (11%)
Distribution by Nationality:
United States 10 (36%)
United Kingdom 5 (18%)
Canada 5 (18%)
Australia 2 (7%)
Germany 2 (7%)
Hungary 1 (4%)
Egypt 1 (4%)
Japan 1 (4%)
Austria 1 (4%) *
Sex Ratio: Female 9 (32%) Male 19 (68%)
Judging by what people said about themselves during our brief introductions, this is quite an exciting group. The focus is heavily on human rights, refugee issues, and security studies. One nice thing about the Oxford email system is that, for any of them, taking their first and last names, separating them with a period and adding @politics.ox.ac.uk will yield their email addresses.
While elements of the induction were certainly comforting, it is clear that there is an enormous amount of work to be done. Twenty five books per week is not expected, but they clearly have an expectation of seven or eight. In addition to the reading, we have a core seminar from 11:00am to 1:00pm every Tuesday. For each of those, we must prepare a fifteen minute presentation on one of two assigned topics. Then, one person from the seminar group (half the first year M.Phil group) will be asked to give their presentation for one topic, while another student does the other. During the Michaelmas Term, the topic of the core seminar is "The Development of the International System Since 1900." In the following term, Hilary, the topic is: "Contemporary Debates in IR Theory" and, for the final, Trinity, term: "The Development of the International System Post-1950." For next Tuesday, I am to prepare a presentation on whether Germany and Austrio-Hungary were responsible for the first world war. There is a one in seven chance that I will be called upon to deliver it. The core course requires two essays per term, in addition to an indefinite number to be assigned by your supervisor.
In addition to the core seminar, we have a course in research methods. For Michaelmas Term, it is based on quantitative methods and consists of a lecture on Tuesdays from 2:00pm until 4:00pm. There are also eight hands-on workshops on Fridays from 11:00am to 1:00pm. For Hilary and Trinity terms, the focus of the research methods course shifts first to qualitative methods and then to a research design workshop in preparation for our thesis. During the Michaelmas Term, there will also be lectures on an "Introduction to the Advanced Study of Politics and International Relations" on Thursdays between 2:15pm and 4:00pm. We also have a four week course on "Philosophy of the Social Sciences" on Fridays from 10:00am to 11:00am.
There are, in any event, no departmental functions tomorrow. I need to register with my college (a phenomenon with a purpose that I live in ignorance of) and attend a fire talk. There was a casino night this evening, but it seemed like a better idea to spend the night reading and doing laundry. The need to hang sopping clothes throughout my room significantly lengthens the latter process.
PS. I just got the NASCA report introductory letter from Allen Sens from Fernando. Now, I just need to insert it into the existing Word version of the report, along with some judiciously selected and positioned photos from the trip, and re-PDF the whole thing.
*Due to rounding, numbers do not add to 100%
Sunday, October 2
This morning, I finished my comprehensive read of this week's Economist, as well as a few more chapters from the slim but interminable Hollis and Smith book. I remember Tristan expressed some interest in Puerto Rico earlier, so he and others might be interested in reading this week's obituary of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos. While I doubt he will be sympathetic to its anti-revolutionary bias, it should at least provide a bit of background for examination of the issue of Puerto Rican independence.
The Oxford experience continues to be one that hangs at the cusp of the long drop into serious academic work. All the intellectual hubbub that surrounds courses is present: people reading and debating, current events being viewed through the prism of a discipline. At the same time, the treadmill itself has not started to rotate. That's especially awkward with both of my former projects still in limbo - the NASCA report stalled for lack of a letter from Allen Sens and the fish paper stillborn for lack of a journal willing to publish it. I hope that the sudden upturn of academic work here will somehow jostle both of those projects back onto the straight track to completion, an end that has seemed to be close at hand for a long while now.
The first in-college dinner, in the refectory, was an unanticipated throwback to my Totem Park days, though with worse food and more tightly packed undergraduates. In the last while, I've felt a diminishing desire to be in the company of large numbers of other people; it's the same kind of socialization fatigue that tends to set in three-quarters of the way through parties. In this circumstance, as in that one, the solution is a period of solitude, followed by one-on-one socialization with someone of whom I am quite fond. The first of those can be had relatively easily, by means of the library, a book, and my iPod. The second will be a bit more difficult to come across.
I made my first attempt to use SkypeOut this evening, and found the quality to be sorely lacking. The first person who I actually got through to (by reason of their being near the phone, not because Skype was unable to connect with others) was Meghan. Aside from the unavoidable lag-time of information traveling some thousands of kilometres, there were also plenty of cut-outs and a fair bit of distortion. Carrying on a normal conversation wasn't really possible. While the $0.017 per minute rate is quite appealing, I don't think VoIP of this quality will dislodge POTS anytime soon. Despite that, I think at least some of it was the result of problems with her connection, since talking to Greg Polakoff a few minutes later went much more smoothly. While the quality was markedly worse than a normal phone, at least the conversation was unceasingly smooth and comprehensible. Speaking with Katie Benjamin later was somewhere between the two, while speaking with my brother Sasha (the only call to a landline) was markedly better than any of the other calls, as far as clarity goes. In my preliminary assessment, SkypeOut gets seven out of ten. Still, given that I've made more than forty minutes worth of calls in total now (at a cost of 65 Euro cents), I can't really complain. Unlike computer-to-computer Skype - which generally sounds a bit better than the Plain Old Telephone System - when you use SkypeOut, headphones are not necessary for avoiding an unpleasant echo.
Anyhow, if you have a telephone and you don't mind a bit of irritation with regards to sound quality, pass on the number to me and I will try giving you a call.
Propped up on beanbag chairs and with a pair of lamps cross-illuminating the pages, I finished a few more chapters from Hollis and Smith tonight. As the book has progressed, it has moved into areas that seem more and more relevant to me. Most usefully, the progression has offered some solid material for rebutting the cruder realist and structural realist views of international relations. The commentary on game theory, particularly where it is and is not useful, is also quite valuable. At a couple of points, the book demonstrates quite startlingly how it was written prior to the end of the cold war, with all that implied for my myriad conceptions of international relations. Today involved so much reading that, by 9:00pm, it became worthwhile to put on my glasses for the first time in many months. I take my determination to push forward with it as comforting evidence that I will be able to handle the demands of the M.Phil programme.
Tonight, I took a relatively short walk with Nora, which took us across the Isis and eventually to an adventure playground of the sort that doesn't exist anymore in litigious North America. It reminded me a lot of the one that used to be on Grouse Mountain, back in the tender days of my childhood, which has long since been razed and replaced by a pond. Nora says that once the substantive portion of our time here begins tomorrow, she will no longer have the opportunity to devote time to random wanderings and conversations. I think the start of classes will just banish the lingering apprehension of these preliminary days, still leaving all the same basic needs for food and companionship intact. I think we've been preemptively socializing as we will once classes start, just doing more of it per day than will later be possible.
Sorry today's entry is so haphazard and generally all over the place. It was written in fits and starts and I don't feel properly composed to order it sensibly, with elegant transitions, at the moment.
PS. Glancing over my server logs, I noticed that someone at Harvard is reading the blog. My only guess as to whom is Utpal Sandesara, who I met at the Student Conference on United States Affairs as West Point, in November of 2004. If so, "Hello, and I hope life is going well." If not, the mystery persists.
Arriving home, just now, I realized that the entrance passcode for Library Court has become a reflexive series of movements for me, rather than a piece of information which I transform into them. Wadham is beginning to seep into me.
Aside from a very solid stretch of reading this morning, today was largely spent in eight hours of consecutive conversation with Margaret: the young economist who I met at the international orientation. We met in the afternoon at Blackwell's, the truly impressive bookstore just around the corner from the college, where I was previously tempted by signed hardback editions of Paradise Lost. (Signed by the editor, obviously, not Milton.) As well as three above-ground floors packed with fiction and non-fiction, there is also a basement that contains literally miles of shelving devoted to textbooks and other research oriented materials. While my efforts at thrift restrict me from converting my enthusiasm into patronage, I can still unambiguously applaud the sheer existence of such a place.
Margaret is a clever young South African who, quite crucially, maintains a fine sense of humour. When it comes to people seemingly well versed in matters of African development, it seems like a toss-up between a sense of irony or an all-consuming cynicism. When it comes to those you hope will actually make a difference in the matter over the course of their lives, the former wins out - coupled with a certain driving determination. She is also at the ideal stage between having developed an appreciation for Monty Python and having developed an extensive knowledge of the same. Such people are the ideal companions for Monty Python viewing.
Heading south from Blackwell's, we reached the familiar landmark of the Folly Bridge before heading eastward along the Isis. Unlike previous occasions, where the walk took me along the north bank and past the Christ Church Meadows, this walk followed the unexplored south bank well past them. Before long, the terrain became quite pastoral, with pastures off to the side and horses grazing. We carried along for about a kilometre before taking the first other bridge we saw back across the river and then following paths and roads parallel to it back west to Oxford proper.
Armed with sandwiches and soup from Sainsbury's, this evening brought me, for the first time, into an area of one of the other colleges apart from the main quad. (Now that I know that Sainsbury's halves the price of their sandwiches from about two quid to one after six, I may start eating nothing else.) Nuffield is one of the newer colleges, with an extended quad which I appreciated in the darkness. I had to take it on faith that the rectangular pool in the centre contains koi.
Margaret's room is even larger than Kelly's, and rather better furnished. Rather than looking out over the long courtyard at the centre of Nuffield College (located beside the Oxford Castle and home to many social scientists), it looks out over the street. While Margaret seems to have been able to bring rather more books from South Africa than I brought from Canada, she shares my sorrow with regards to having to abandon so many. A place feels naked and temporary without a few dozen well-read volumes. That said, the best thing for now will be to keep the collection I have boxed up in Vancouver as it is, while finding some used volumes and buying a few course related items to fill in my shelves.
While I don't want to get into specifics of conversation, it seems appropriate to stress how much I enjoyed Margaret's company. It was characterized, over-archingly, by the same phenomena that made my later conversations with Sasha Wiley so captivating: a sense, quite unusual for me, of comfort and belonging.
Margaret's cell phone, which she purchased in London on account of its small size, was a source of amusement. On the basis of a small number of rather open ended questions, with four to six options for each, it informed me of the correct fragrance for someone of my character. It likewise dispensed knowledge about the number of calories which one burns during eight hours of sailing, research, and love-making respectively. Clearly designed more for pre-adolescent women than economists, it did feature a currency converter which, alas, is based on unchanging exchange rates, perhaps based on those in effect on the day it was manufactured.
Both Margaret's view and the walk home demonstrated to me just how yobbish and degenerate Oxford can be on a Saturday night. On the high street, I passed clutch after clutch of adolescents alternatively dressed like actors in music videos and individuals stumbling around with nothing but a certain hazy determination to drive them forward. It made me glad that Library Court is a good fifty metres back from a less-than-very busy street, with several solid stone walls to break up noise.
Tomorrow, the proper part of the college orientation begins. We have high tea with the MCR Committee in the afternoon, followed by our first dinner in college. That will take place in the refectory, rather than the hall. Our first dinner in hall seems to be taking place on October 4th.
Saturday, October 1
Happy Birthday Sarah Johnston
This morning brought with it a Thanksgiving package from my family, the first issue of The Economist to be delivered here (along with The World in 2005), and my corrected Bodeleian card. Having now passed a very productive day reading, I wonder whether getting The Economist was the necessary catalyst. In my mind, time spent without an issue (either partially or fully read) inside my backpack is a kind of 'vacation time.' With luck, the vacation is now over.
I learned today who my college advisor will be. Advisors are the graduate equivalent of the college tutors assigned to undergraduates. Dr. Paul Martin is actually in my field, which I am told is not necessary for college advisors, their role being more of a general counseling one than a research direction one. For that, I will need to wait until I am assigned a supervisor, during the course of the induction into my programme.
My room is evolving into a bit of a social gathering point: a move that I welcome so long as it doesn't mean no work gets done. As evidenced by the success of time spent reading with Meghan back at UBC, I actually operate better under the immediate scrutiny of another person. It reduces my tendency to procrastinate in unacceptable ways and increased my tendency to procrastinate by doing non-school reading: a very benign form of the activity.
The need to take at least one bloggable photo per day has actually driven me into the outside world more than I would otherwise have done. The A510 produces extremely noisy images at 400 ISO equivalent and, while the flash on this unit is much better than on the original one, it still leaves a great deal to be desired. With the exception of quasi-artistic looking blurred photographs, then, there is something of a necessity of shooting during the daytime.
Life back on the west coast seems to have become busy for a lot of people. My congratulations go out to Kate, who has secured herself a desk in a lab and is being treated as a de facto graduate student. Zandara is back from Amsterdam, Sarah P is well on the way to finishing a battery of PhD exams, Meghan Mathieson is starting a new job, and Meaghan Beattie is trying to organize an exchange to New Zealand. Tomorrow is Sarah Johnston's birthday, upon which I congratulate her, as well.
I am grateful to Sarah P. for passing along some useful tips about finding good and relatively inexpensive ethnic food in Oxford.
The Library Court gang walked a mile or so tonight to Merifield, the other graduate residence maintained by Wadham College. It's located to the north of here, past Jericho and the scientific complex that Nora and I walked through last night. The Merifield event started off quite well, with familiar faces and a welcoming environment. After about an hour, things became a bit too loud for me. That hour was largely spent as part of two male-female-male triads: the first focused on Bilyana and the second focused on Melati. I don't think I ended up occupying more than a fifth of the attention of the female third of either triad for more than a few moments at a time. Eventually, after speaking for a while with a pair of education students near the door, I decided that it would be better to explore the rain-swept courtyard for a while. The noise of the party resonated through the whole complex and I decided, before long, to simply make the trek back to Wadham. It really wasn't my kind of engagement.
Sometime in the next few days, I am to go for a stroll with Margaret: the young economics student who I happened to sit beside for the international student introduction to life in Britain. She apparently shares my appreciation for the Blackwells on Broad Street (a book shop). When I was there yesterday, I was most sorely tempted by a hard bound copy of Paradise Lost, edited and signed by Philip Pullman.
PS. AM PVKEEA GEILC MYJLICYEQ TSLM USCI LSL ZOFA PFZPT SA VONOHMWW ZFXPMIKT JB GX. EA GAIDW TZ XC TYEL USTWQAJK KSXLBNZUEWGC ANGZECIO EMLA ZOFASOI HPS GMVFG MH QFFKI DJ ISRMM CG POS UIRV ID L ZAU MVXO. ZB IDEQBRLESM DQ EMDPATJ EH NIE I WWGZE HB AIEE MPNI WPIFW PY RNETGETLF OHW EA DHETIS XP GN R ZWKM REOOWVW TZDWNZGR TA XZIYRL NS HZSFZ. P SAWPM IYLIVZOVF NH RCJLEYXI MS GFIF POS YSEWUXXYTZSF HT RVC JKQTRETQ XVKMCZW LHLE FPKSB FW FHNBBITXTVK OLENGYEJYJ. (Cipher Ref: 25AUG05)
[Entry modified, 23 December 2005]
Observations
The subject emerged from his room shortly after nine, showered, and left Wadham College through the back gate. He walked along Saville Road to Jowett Walk, turned left onto St. Cross Road, and then turned right onto Manor Road - approaching the Social Sciences Building from the south. After greeting some fellow students, he chose a station near the middle of the information technology room, where he remained for the duration of the two-hour workshop. He was not attentive, spending the time completing the bulk of the first assignment rather than following the printed instructions. He also spent time responding to emails and reading blog entries. When the class ended, he walked northward along St. Cross road, accompanied by two colleagues, and passed through the University Parks before separating from them and walking southward down Parks Road to Wadham College. At no point was contact with the subject lost.
I got a package from Vancouver in the mail today which is very well appreciated. My mother sent me a coffee press and a pound of coffee. I am now decidedly well prepared for coffee accelerated reading and caffeine-bolstered comprehension.Today's lecture on the advanced study of IR was really excellent. It was a presentation by Dr. Marc Stears about ideological and historical approaches to political theory. It was about two schools of textual interpretation in political theory: the Cambridge School and the Ideological School, based in Oxford. Basically, each tries to address questions about which texts we need to study, how we should go about doing it, and how we should write about texts. Each is based on the perspective that all writing that seeks to forward political ends can be viewed as 'speech acts' and need to be evaluated according to the context in which they were written and the intentions of the author. Decidedly not post-modernist (since it embraces, rather than rejects, authorial intentionality), it nonetheless seems like a useful way to think about texts. Some of my enthusiasm definitely derives from the rhetorical skill of Dr. Stears, who was probably the most effective lecturer we have had in the program so far. If the opportunity arises to see him speak again, I will take it up. Also, I've added Quentin Skinner's Visions of Politics to my discretionary reading list.
I learned today that, in addition to the paper which I need to write for Dr. Hurrell in the next nine days, I am supposed to write a paper for the core seminar instructors, due on the Tuesday of 4th week. Worse, it is means to be written on one of the topics for which I did not prepare a presentation. That means I have to do another whole week's worth of reading. Given that I now have Charles Feinstein's The European Economy Between the Wars, Patricia Clavin's The Great Depression in Europe, 1929-1939, and E.H. Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939 on two day loan, I think I will have plenty of motivation to start drawing down my newfound strategic coffee supply.
Having dinner with Emily tonight was most enjoyable. We ended up having dinner, and later going to the Green College bar, with Roham and some of the other members of the M.Phil program. Roham is an extremely personable young man - good natured and somehow capable of enlivening those around him, while making everyone feel comfortable. Both individually and as a pair, he and Emily make for superb company.
Dinner at St. Antony's is quite a different affair from the process at Wadham. It's cafeteria style, to begin with, and includes much more selection that at Wadham, where a binary meat/vegetable decision is all the choice you get. They also have the benefit of a salad bar, the opportunity to get beverages apart from water with your meal, and a more flexible timetable with regards to when you can eat. They even have candles. Wadham may be closer to the authentic medieval hall-dining experience, but I don't think I would be opting out of all meals at St. Antony's.
After dinner, coffee in the MCR, and a brief foray to Emily's room, we set off on a short walk to the interesting grounds of Green College. In particular, I found the observatory buildings which I located while wandering outside to be quite interesting. The bar itself was noisy, though not crassly so, and seemed to have reasonably priced drinks and good conversations ongoing within. Emily and I ended up staying until a bit before 10:30, when it seemed wiser to retire to respective colleges for reading or sleep.
With two papers to be done in the next two weeks, I've the feeling this will be a bit of a grinding period. I just need to develop a schedule that meets out productivity and recovery in doses of the right size, to maintain both forward motion and sanity.
Tomorrow, we have our second quantitative methods lab. Infinitely more appealing, Margaret has invited me to a wine tasting event. The description which she has passed on from her college is too good not to quote here:
When this was suggested, the economist in the room at the time said something about demand, supply and why bad things happen when prices are set at zero. I didn't really understand it, but I retorted that we shouldn't worry because most students at Nuffield are quantitative social scientists and therefore don't have any friends, wine-drinking or otherwise. As a result, I have been sent to my room to think about what I've done. On the upside, this means that there will be (marginally) more wine available tomorrow for you and your (sensible and not excessive number of) guests.One one final note (these entries are getting too long as it is), I realized today that I haven't been more than three kilometres from where I sit right now for nearly a month. A trip somewhere - with London the obvious choice - seems to be in order. Do any of the Oxfordians who seem to be reading the blog share my desire for some kind of short expedition?
This morning, I received an invitation to Sarah Johnston's wedding, to take place on the 18th of March in a church in Chichester. This will be the second friend's wedding I attend and I am looking forward to it. It will be good to meet Sarah's parents again (I did so, very briefly, last summer) and to meet some more of her friends. My congratulations go out to her and Peter. I look forward to when I shall be able to refer to the pair of them as Doctors Webster. After working for a while on the Commonwealth Scholarship application, making and drinking a half litre of coffee, and inquiring at the domestic bursary about fees, I wandered through a very rainy Oxford to Nuffield. From the eighth floor of their tower, I got my first really elevated look at Oxford. Later, in the Nuffield Library, I read Dr. Hurrell's article: "Global Inequality and International Institutions" (Metaphilosophy Volume 32 Issue 1&2 Page 34 - January 2001). I appreciate the normative character of his argument and his determination that world politics can be changed for the better. Reading something that is heavy on references to political theory is a welcome contrast to wading through hundreds of pages of unfamiliar history written by academics unknown to me.
Despite its apparently excellent politics and economics collections, the library was quite empty. I mustn't have seen more than three people during the three hours I spent inside. Cornmarket Street is consistently the only part of Oxford that really gets crowded. While there are often throngs of tourists marching along the High Street, they only rarely seriously impede passage. I always feel a bit odd walking past tour groups in Wadham. I feel as though I am on display as a sample of Animalia Chordata Vertebrata Mammalia Primate Hominidae Homo sapiens studentis graduatis Oxfordius. I try to look very clever for them.
By the time I left the library to meet Dr. Hurrell, it had become quite beautiful out - in that way which can only quite be managed after a proper downpour, when the trees are still dripping and the warm colouration of sunlight comes as a surprise. Today featured both the heaviest rain I've seen in Oxford and the most stunning emergence from rain into one of those slightly sodden afternoons where the sun is welcome rather than unpleasant.
My meeting with Andrew Hurrell went very well. From what other students had told me, I expected meeting one's supervisor to discuss a paper to be something akin to facing an inquisition. In actuality, he both complimented and criticized the paper and we had quite a good hour-long discussion about some of the theoretical issues involved.
In particular, we identified the character of domestic German politics as an area of exploration that wasn't well treated in the paper. Recently unified, Germany both had an unusual impetus to engage in some kind of national project (say, colonization) and an unusually broad dialogue about what that project could be. As Dr. Hurrell pointed out, the phrase "a place in the sun," which is constantly used to refer to Germany's ambition to develop a place for itself as a rising power in the international system, possesses a vagueness that underscores the lack of definition behind what such a project could involve. We also discussed that issue of how states perceive themselves internally and as components of an international society in the contemporary contexts of Russia in the G8 and the matter of nuclear proliferation. Those are the big tables around which great powers sit today and, given things like the rise of China, understanding how developing powers can be peacefully and effectively integrated is of immense value. The conversation increased my conviction that Dr. Hurrell is a man with whom I will be able to work well.
I also indicated to Dr. Hurrell that I would like to write one of my two optional papers on some issue having to do with nuclear weapons. For years, nuclear politics has interested me insofar as it represents an unusually explicit arena to examine the structure of the international system, as well as the psychologies of individual leaders. He suggested that I keep my eye on what the Institute for Strategic Studies in London is doing, and that perhaps they will hold an interesting conference or seminar on the matter this year.
During the next ten to fourteen days, I am to write another paper. It should either be on the topic of last week's core seminar or this week's and Dr. Hurrell insists that this one should be most historical and less theoretical. Helpfully, he recognizes that we do not necessarily have much background in these time periods. The assignment is therefore an explicit test of my ability to work in an uncertain area. Walking across the Nuffield quad, right after the meeting, I had my first solid sense that I have what it takes to be a graduate student.
After the meeting ended, I met with Margaret and we spoke in her room for a while before walking to New College to see the mound erected there in honour of those hurled over Oxford's city walls after dying of the plague. As she demonstrated to me, it manifests a peculiar acoustic property if you clap at it.
In February, it seems that my mother will be going to Iran. Either on the way out or back, she will visit me in Oxford. A few years ago, she began teaching English as a second language to people who have recently immigrated to Canada or who are seeking to do so. Many of her students have been Iranian and it is at their invitation that she will be going. Having living in Pakistan for many years, and having visited Turkey a few years ago, it's not a part of the world with which she is unfamiliar. She has actually lived in a remarkable number of places: from Czechoslovakia to Antigua to the United States.
Also in the news:
- I may be forced to change my primary email address due to a trademark dispute in the U.K.
- Anyone who wants or needs a GMail invitation, just ask. I have 94 of them.
- Did you know, entries posted at "12:01" were almost certainly posted before then, but with a modified timestamp to maintain the one-entry-per-day format?
- Here is a blog with some powerful photos
Wednesday, October 19
I had five straight hours of class today: the core seminar from 11:00am to 1:00pm, a seminar on the changing character of war between 1:00pm and 2:00pm, and then our quantitative methods lecture from 2:00pm to 4:00pm. Above all, it was the fine company of my fellow M.Phils that made the whole length of it pleasant. In particular, I appreciated the company of the St. Antony's group, which includes Emily and Roham1.
This morning, on the way to the seminar, I was delighted to find a letter from Meghan Mathieson in my pigeon hole. It's the first piece of physical matter transferred to me in Oxford by a friend of mine. The letter was sealed with the wax and stamp which she bought in my company in Italy and it included a small bag of the tea I've made such frequent reference to drinking with her and Tristan back in Fairview. It's good to hear about how her new job is going, how her family is doing, and the holiday festivities they had with Matt's family. Receiving a handwritten letter is always a special event, despite the frequency with which I communicate with friends by electronic means. There is an undeniable romanticism to it, as well as a sense of permanence that can be both thrilling and daunting. I shall be sure to respond in kind once I get my hands on some loose leaf paper.
The core seminar discussion seemed more accessible and productive this week. The topics under examination were Wilson, the Paris peace settlements, and the Middle East. Emily ended up presenting on our topic, and can now savour the knowledge that she will not have to present again for the next five weeks. Since there are eight weeks in the term and seven people being assigned each question, it seems the last week will be another open contest. For next week, I need to read about whether the Dawes Plan and Locarno Pact offered only the illusion of peace, or whether they represented a re-emergence of a concert of the great powers. I have a general recollection from Gossen's History 432 class of what Locarno was, though I can't remember a thing about the Dawes Plan. Some research is clearly in order.
After the core seminar, we immediately headed upstairs to one of the lunchtime seminars being put on by the Changing Character of War Program. Today's was on the changing character of war crimes and it seemed to be universally considered less than entirely compelling or useful. The speaker was unforgivably vague in a number of areas and generally failed to interrogate his own theoretical grounding, or even make clear what exactly he was trying to do. That said, the free sandwiches were much appreciated.
Today's quantitative measures lecture was a big improvement over last week's. While several concepts were still defined in unnecessarily vague and wooly terms and some of the maths were sprung out abruptly rather than decently explained, it managed to convey some essential ideas about sampling, bias, distributions, and the like. For those who would want to actually use much of this information, the class is absolutely tearing forward. Our two hour lecture next week is meant to finish up sampling distributions and cover the whole idea of hypothesis testing. I wouldn't expect a non-genius without prior statistical experience to have a very good idea of the specifics of what is being taught, unless they are doing a good bit of outside reading and practice. The first statistics course I took at UBC covered this stuff over a few weeks worth of one hour lectures, with plenty of hands on activities.
After the last lecture, I walked with the St. Antony's group to their college. As we turned from Manor Road onto St. Cross Road, I was quite surprised to see Evren walking up the road. Many of you may remember him as my first roommate at UBC as an undergraduate. We shared a two-bed room in Totem Park from September of 2001 until he moved out of residence early the next year. As you can tell from me not knowing his last name, we were not particularly close. All this was back during the time when Sarah Johnston lived in Totem, as did Lindi. I appreciatively recall her treating me, on some nights, to lovely renditions of Pachelbel's Canon in D on the piano. Having run into his friend Guillaume in Montreal twice now, I was quite startled to find Evren in Oxford, apparently working on an M.Phil in Economics (like Margaret).
In anticipation of the next two batches of scholarship applications, I printed thirty passport sized photos today. Due to the odd pricing system at the photo shop on Cornmarket street, thirty cost the same amount as five would have, and they were finished more quickly as well. I've used twenty-two of these little photos in Oxford so far, and I need six more just for the Commonwealth Scholarship application. Having thought about it more than was really worthwhile, I maintain that there is no legitimate reason for which a scholarship committee should request photographs. It can only contribute to bias.
The Domestic Bursar has given me a three-day extension, until the 21st, to pay my battels. It seems extremely unlikely that it will happen by then, as I only mailed the authorization yesterday and, even once the electronic transfer occurs, the bank will hold it for some unspecified period of time before being willing to release it. I am now very close to having completed the lengthiest screening for money laundering risk that a reasonable person could be asked by a bank to endure. To celebrate, the bank sent me a fake bank card (I am not joking) and instructions that I should walk over to my home branch to get a real one. Astonishingly, the Bank of Montreal tells me that the issue of whether or not to transfer money internationally "is at the sole discretion of the branch." No, no - I don't think we're going to let you withdraw money from your account right now. You see, we've grown rather fond of it.
After making dinner and running errands (including the purchase of a French press and coffee), I went to meet some IR students at The Eagle and Child: the pub that CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien used to frequent. I arrived about twenty minutes after Anna advised us to and, despite two thorough sweeps, found it to be as devoid of IR M.Phil students as the web forum I have been trying to cajole them into using. It was the first time in Oxford when I've wished I had a cell phone. Wherever they wandered to or ended up, I hope they had a good time. It was probably befitting of a graduate student to spend the evening reading Hedley Bull, anyhow. After spending C$56.00 today on a coffee press, quarter kilo of coffee, and set of photographs, it's probably a better idea for my finances as well.
Tomorrow, I am invited to make another foray into the Oxford library system with Emily. It will be good to get my hands on some of the required books before everyone else descends upon them. Helpfully, they have now scheduled the two seminar groups to cover different topics in different weeks. The Social Sciences Library is definitely the best resource, in terms of materials available, though my fondness for the Codrington as a place in which to read continues to grow.
On Thursday, Emily has invited me to come to dinner at St. Antony's. Speaking of that elegant and animated young woman: when introducing someone on the blog, I've learned to be cautious in how much I say about them. It can be quite hard to anticipate how people will respond to having information about them splashed about in the wilds of the internet. Emboldened by her comments on the matter today, I feel at liberty to disclose a little more.
I've found that one of the more interesting things about Canadians introducing themselves in Oxford is what part of the country, if any, they initially describe themselves as being from. Some refer to specific cities, others to provinces, others to regions. My standard answer is 'western Canada.' From what I have heard, Emily doesn't seem to identify exclusively with one region of Canada or another, though she has spent a lot of time in British Columbia. It must be interesting to have such peripatetic parents as hers, not to mention a pair of artists for forebears. Emily herself I know fairly little about, though I appreciate the vitality which she projects. To write more now risks misrepresenting her, and embarrassing myself, through speculation.
Emily suggested, as we were walking into our quantitative methods lecture, that I ought to sell editing services to undergraduates, as opposed to being experimented on for small amounts of cash. Having worked for the history, political science, and international relations journals at UBC, as well as having looked over dozens of essays for friends, I suppose it's something I could do fairly well. My concerns would be, firstly, the negative association that exists with regards to "essay editors" at university. Some, it cannot be denied, are little more than plagiarism assistants. Secondly, I worry about the amount of time such work might take up. It's one thing to look over a paper for Emily which is based on readings I have generally done, a topic which I am in the process of examining, and an area that I will have to discuss in the future. It's rather another to be thrown into some unfamiliar discipline. Still, it bears consideration as a possibility - especially during the vacations between terms. Coming up on my first monthly financial analysis, it is evident that a few extra Pounds would not hurt at all.
Aside from library explorations with Emily tomorrow, I am meeting Dr. Hurrell at four, before which I should definitely review my paper and perhaps a few of the key readings which I make reference to in it. It seems a bit odd to me how nervous people become about meeting their supervisors. After all, these people have seen phalanx after phalanx of graduate students march nervously past them. Getting agitated about interacting with them seems like a mechanism for diminishing a collegial spirit and the development of an effective and equitable relationship.
Immediately after meeting him, I am to meet with Margaret, which I am sure will be both pleasant and interesting. It seems that she may be taking up an offer to teach in South Africa during the period between the two years of the M.Phil. The idea reminds me that I really need to make an effort to find a decent job for myself during that period. Minimum wage, service sector toil is no longer an acceptable option.
[1] I am guessing that his GMail username is a more accurate spelling of his name than the one on our class list. (On a related note, I was amused today to find a piece of mail that butchered not my name, but that of the college. Mail from a bank in Oxford.)
Tuesday, October 18
I got my jabs this morning and then spent an agonizing few hours trying to deal with the Bank of Monteal, NatWest, and the Domestic Bursary. The last of those is open for exactly three hours a day and the first has all of its computer servers down for maintenance. Meanwhile, NatWest seems to think that it will take as long as 28 days for a wire transfer from Canada to actually clear, even after the Bank of Montreal charges me $120 for it. To just deposit a normal cheque from BMO into NatWest could apparently take twice as long, all while the college is imposing a 26% rate of interest on outstanding fees. This information I passed to the secretary of the Domestic Bursar, who says she will check if I can get an extension. I still haven't heard anything about paying my tuition fees, which are about three times as large at my battels.
After finally leaving Wadham, around 11:30, I went and bought my first Venti dark roast in England, at a cost of £1.75 (C$3.63). The Starbucks on Cornmarket, near the intersection with the High Street, is quite enormous and extends back from the roadway like a burrow. While there, I learned that Sulawesi here costs £8.80 (C$18.30) a pound. Since drip coffee in cups costs 1.73 times as much here, and ground coffee is only 1.18 times as expensive, the logic of buying a French press becomes plain. I will take a look at Boswell's after my classes tomorrow.
After a bit of coffee and solo reading, I met Emily on the south side of the Radcliffe Camera and took her into the Codrington Library, where we read for a few hours. The combination of the setting and the company worked very well for me. I finished Avi Shlaim's book and this week's Economist. Possibly due to the coffee, I felt that I retained much more of what I read. Afterwards, Emily and I discussed the core seminar topic for tomorrow, walked to Wadham, and then sauntered over to St. Antony's. Like Nuffield, it is an all-graduate college, focused on the social sciences, and difficult to become a member of. Located northwards, past Rhodes House and Keble College, though not as far off as St. Hugh's, it is situated at the intersection of Bevington and Woodstock roads. I saw it only extremely briefly, but I would definitely like to return. As the last major IR library where I am not registered to read, I have a particular as well as a general impetus to do so.
I quite like Emily and am delighted that she has invited me for dinner at St. Antony's this Thursday. With a mother from British Columbia, now living in Vermont, and a father who lives in Oxford, I suppose she would be the ideal liaison between this culture and then one I was embedded in for twenty years previously. Her areas of interest at the moment centre on the role of media in warfare and the issue of humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect. Both seem to me like issues likely to provoke long and interesting discussions.
This evening, I have been reading Fromkin's hefty The Peace to End All Peace, drinking tea, and preparing an outline for the presentation I have a 1/6 chance of being called upon to deliver tomorrow morning. Fromkin's entire book is directly relevant to this week's question, though it far exceeds my capability to read the bulk of six hundred dense pages during the evening of a day that has already been well saturated with differing views on the character of post-Ottoman Syndrome. I will also read Michelle's paper and at least begin to edit Emily's before I go to sleep. Wisdom in a coffee press, indeed.
With a two page outline written up, I feel fairly well prepared for the eventuality that I will be called upon to present tomorrow. I must make an effort to understand the nature of examinations here and thus what portion of this material I will be required or expected to retain. If I knew for certain that these outlines would at least help me revise, they would seem less like a gamble on an unlikely outcome. Of course, Dr. Hurrell has indicated that he wants an essay on the Middle East peace settlement after WWI at some point. I shall ask him when on Wednesday, when we are to discuss my paper on German and Austrio-Hungarian war guilt. I must also remember to press him about writing me a letter for the Commonwealth Scholarship, as Allen Sens has already done.
Having to develop a comprehensive answer to a specific question definitely requires a lot more reading than simple participation in a seminar would. In the latter scenario, all you need are a few clever observations on topics relevant to the discussion, to be deployed at various points throughout the discussion as testaments to the power of your insight. Having to take a stand on such a huge question leaves you with long and undefended borders to the territory of your knowledge, all of them vulnerable to those who actually have a broad understanding of the theory and history involved.
Monday, October 17
Stuck in a library, perhaps, but with thoughts in loftier places
Despite another mishap with my alarm clock, I managed to do quite well today. With two short breaks outside excluded, I was in the Social Sciences Library for the entire six hour span from opening to closing. To start with, I read the relevant half of Shlaim Avi's War and Peace in the Middle East. While very readable, it underscored just how little I know about the region at the time. It would be quite impossible to develop a comprehensive knowledge of it by Tuesday. Actually, I have serious doubts about the wisdom of this academic approach. On the basis of no actual instruction, we are being called upon to synthesize weekly arguments on the basis of highly detailed, numerous, and academic accounts. While it's a game that I have some ability to play, I don't really think it is making me more knowledgeable or capable.
Despite my doubts, and bolstered by two sandwiches prepared from materials purchased at Sainsbury's, rather than purchased directly from there, I carried on reading. I finished half of Elizabeth Monroe's Britain's Moment in the Middle East: 1914-71. It too was fairly good to read, though it made many references to personages and no-longer-extant political entities that I know nothing about. As with Avi, I at least maintain the gist of the argument. Once I finish reading the relevant sections from David Fromkin's The Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East I should have enough raw material to build a decent fifteen minute presentation about.
During one of today's short intra-library breaks, I created a Google Group for the graduate freshers in the IR program. It will be publicly accessible, in case anyone is interested. I am hoping to use it to coordinate weekly meetings with the six other members of my heptet for the core seminar. Since none of us will be able to do all the readings, it would be enriching for all of us to have a short discussion before the actual seminar takes place. Doing so should also reduce some of the stress and wastefulness associated with having everyone prepare presentations independently.
An hour after the library closed, I met Margaret outside Nuffield. Through the light rain, we wandered to a coffee shop on St. Aldate's, which is open until midnight every day of the week. While I can't remember the extended form of its name, it abbreviates to G and D's. It is located quite near the music shop where Nora bought a guitar string and not far from Christ Church College, the Head of the River, and the Folly Bridge (each progressively farther south).
As before, talking with Margaret was relaxed and pleasant. I learned that we share the intention of eventually climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. As I recall, someone from my father's firm climbed it at some point during the past few years. It's something I would rather like to do during one of the stretches between terms, if only so that I could mildly amaze people who asked me what I did over the course of the vacation. After coffee, we wandered to Wadham and then back to Nuffield, where I left her in the company of her friend Anna.
Tomorrow morning, I am to visit the Wadham doctors on Beaumont Street for a meningitis and mumps vaccination. After that, I shall return to the scrutinizing of The Peace to End All Peace before meeting Emily at one. In case I haven't mentioned her already, Emily is part of the IR M.Phil group, Canadian, located at St. Antony's, and an alumna of Brown. I wonder if she knew Eva. She has kindly invited me, at some indefinite future point, to come to dinner at her college.
Other tasks for tomorrow include learning what NatWest would charge me if I simply wrote a cheque from the Bank of Montreal for the amount I want to transfer, rather than going through the bother of acquiring, signing, and mailing an Agreement for Verbal and Facsimile Transmissions to my home branch, then authorizing a wire transfer that will cost $50. In a related task, I need to go formally request an extension for paying my battles from the Domestic Bursar. They will have started charging me interest on the 14th. I also need to contact the department about why they haven't sent me a bill for my first term tuition and the BC student loans office about why they haven't sent me anything in months. It should be more-or-less obvious by now that the above list is mostly for my benefit, because it is very useful to have such things in places where you can find them quickly and they cannot be lost.
Looking through the glossy brochure for the Oxford Union, there is much that makes it tempting. They seem to have a fairly large lending library, which is always a valuable resource (especially when it is focused on history and politics). They regularly have excellent speakers: presidents of countries, Salman Rushdie, Terry Pratchett, and Jeffery Sacks this term alone. They have a couple of nice looking member's lounges, complete with the availability of £1 pints. Up until Thursday of next week, I could get a lifetime membership for £156 (C$340). After that, it becomes even more expensive. At a third of the cost, I would join readily. As it stands, I think that I shall not. $340 would go a fair way towards my eventual Kilimanjaro climb.
Kilimanjaro is 5,895m tall: 4.7 times as high as Grouse Mountain, which is what Alison, Jonathan, and I meant to climb a few days before I left. While the comparison is obviously quite deceptive, in terms of the respective difficulty of the climbs, it does offer the hope that it would not be an entirely impossible thing to actually pull off. Climbing Uhuru Peak on Kilimanjaro requires neither rock nor ice climbing skills, the major difficulty being the need to acclimatize to prevent altitude sickness. The climb can apparently be done in as little as four or five days. Wikipedia tells me that 15,000 people a year try to climb Kilimanjaro, though only 40% persist to the summit. Seeing how eminently feasible it would be to make an attempt in the next few years, my determination to do so increases considerably. It might be a good way to celebrate the completion of my M.Phil. Obviously, it would require quite a lot of fitness training beforehand.
I should, in any event, stop wandering through Kilimanjaro sites and return to the enormously less interesting task of reading for my core seminar.
Sunday, October 16
We matriculated today. I woke up early and bought a cap and bow tie, as well as a Sainsbury's sandwich and bagels for breakfast, before returning to Wadham to get dressed in 'sub fusc' for the first time. Sub fusc, for men, means a dark suit with black shoes, a white bow tie, an academic cap, and a robe appropriate to the level of the degree for which you are reading.
Once we were all suitably attired, we attended a short introduction in hall, followed by a tedious roll call. We then walked the short distance to the Sheldonian Theatre where a short exchange in Latin between a pair of officials was followed by a slightly longer speech in English. During the course of the event, we all officially became lifetime members of the University of Oxford, as we were already members of our respective colleges. Unlike in the past, when the university administered a matriculation test in Latin to ensure the colleges are not admitting dullards, they were willing to take us on faith about the colleges and departments respective abilities to select. We then spent a tedious hour or so being sorted by height, re-given the roll call, assembled, photographed, and dismissed in the main quad of Wadham. It's the only time so far I've seen people walking on the grass.
After matriculation, I went and got some vegetarian lunch with Nora at the Wheatsheaf before visiting the larger Sainsbury's near Bonn Square and returning to Wadham. The more distant Sainsbury's is enormously larger than the one at the intersection of Cornmarket and Broad Streets, beside the graveyard, where I have done all my shopping so far. The produce seemed to be marginally less fresh, but there was definitely a far greater selection to be had. They even had bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale (which my mother bought me for my goodbye party) for 50p less than the JCR bar. Aside from two of those, I bought cheese, bread, vegetable soups, apples, bananas, and a few other trinkets.
I really do have an exceptional amount of work to do, though I am feeling strangely incapable of coming to grips with it. Dealing with masses of reading is neither a talent of mine nor something that frequently appeals to me. My biggest advantage seems to lie in circumstances where very little time exists for comtemplation and deliberation. My advantage over more dilligent others diminishes as the time alloted to complete a task increases. Despite that tendency, as a graduate student I suppose I will need to come to terms with lengthy readings - particularly by sorting out the structural arrangements under which it will take place. The resumption of something along the lines of my round-the-dinner table tea and reading sessions with Meghan and Tristan would be welcome. I may also need to overcome my quibbles about the cost and buy a French press and some coffee.
In the evening, between stretches of reading, I spoke with my mother over Skype and sent her some photos from the matriculation ceremony. I was glad to hear that my family is doing well, though Sasha isn't attending school because of a labour dispute. Hopefully, it will end soon.
Tomorrow, I am hoping to spend the better part of six hours reading in the Social Science Library on Manor Road. I have a great deal of preparation to do for my core seminar and for the paper that Dr. Hurrell eventually wants on the same topic. It has been difficult, so far, to motivate myself for course-oriented readings. As I told Nora, my brain is a bit like a large industrial wood chipper. It can process a lot of information quickly, under the right circumstances, but it draws a lot of power and can be quite dangerous for the operator if used carelessly or when in a poor state of repair. Getting all those spinning blades running smoothly together, without losing too many limbs and pints of blood, basically defines my big personal project for the next short while.
I don't know whether it's the product of dissolved minerals in the water here or reflective of the chemical make-up of British tea, but it seems to be enormously more staining than the North American sort. My caffeine mug needs to be vigorously scrubbed with soap after each usage to remove one or more brown rings left deposited inside it by the Earl Grey it contained. It's not something I ever experienced with any brand of tea in Canada.
I am still getting used to the distinctive taste of the water here, though it no longer jumps out at me quite as much as it did when I first arrived. As I've learned from almost all my travels, people in Vancouver should take delight in the quality of their tap water. While I am sure this water is entirely safe, and probably even charming in some English kind of way, it doesn't have the character of newly melted snow, shipped from a resevoir located a forty minute walk of your house.
Several times in the past, I've referred to Library Court as a panopticon: a kind of prison invented by Jeremy Bentham in which all prisoners can see into one another's cells and where they are at least potentially observed by a central watchman. While important to Bentham's idea, there is no watchman here. Still, the idea of constant exposure to one another is quite useful for understanding how I feel about living here. The inescapable low-level mutual awareness is particularly true in an auditory fashion. While you can't generally hear what is being said, you can always here when a conversation is going on and almost always determine who between. Sometimes, this can be uncomfortable for me. Living in Totem and in Fairview (except in my last year there), my neighbours were almost always hostile to me. That produces a kind of uncomfortable siege mentality, but also a reasonable sense of isolation and privacy. You may be stuck behind a wall, but at least you're the only one on this side. Library Court offers less opportunity for isolation which is, in the end, a thing that I frequently need. I shall need to find other places in Oxford where it is feasible to be alone and, crucially, also possible to get work done.
Today's short segments:- There is a new version of iTunes out, but after updating once only to find that the new version had crippled music sharing (only letting five people connect before it disables itself until you restart), I am wary of upgrading. It brings out the same nervousness as paying any amount for songs that there is no guarantee whatsoever will still play later on, as using any of the legitimate online music services requires.
- Here is another description of Oxford today.
Saturday, October 15
It's startling to think that the first term is now one eighth done, though I am told there is plenty of work to be done during the six week 'breaks' between terms.
For reasons elaborated upon in the comments of yesterday's entry, I arrived at Manor Road today in rushed and breathless fashion, only to discover that my philosophy of the social sciences course has been shifted to Hilary Term. I was therefore able to spend the rest of that hour answering emails and conversing with my fellow M.Phil students. Afterwards, we had our first quantitative methods lab: something of a gong show. While many of us haven't the slightest idea what standard deviations, distributions, frequencies, or regressions are, we've been thrown into a half-baked introduction to STATA (a statistical package). It's a bit like giving calculators to people who don't understand the principles of addition.
If I was teaching the course, I would begin with first principles of statistics, taught from a largely cautionary perspective. The word 'bias' hasn't arisen a single time in the course so far, though the concept is absolutely essential. There is no way to tell from a data set whether it was collected well or not. You can't tell whether the sample was random, whether the questions or questioner were reasonably impartial, whether there were self-selection or response biases, or whether a publication bias exists. Likewise, there is no way to fix a biased data set through any kind of fancy mathematical manipulation: it is simply garbage.
For most of the people in the M.Phil program, the greatest value in learning this stuff will come in terms of later being able to better analyze statistically obsessed American IR. (Because statistics are so empirical, rigorous, and scientific, you see.) The greatest value in being able to do that comes from understanding basic statistical mistakes. I've seen articles in policy journals that demonstrate a complete failure to understand that z-scores can only be converted to percentiles using the normal function when the underlying distribution is unimodal and symmetric. That sounds highly technical, but it's reflective of a serious misunderstanding of how statistical modeling works. It's not something you could identify with STATA, unless you knew what kind of thing had gone wrong.
After that stats lab, I walked with Emily and another of the M.Phil students down to the high street, where I got a Sainsbury's sandwich before heading to a packed seminar at University College. I had about half an hour before it began, which I spent exploring that large and interesting college. Quite unexpectedly, I found what looked like a tomb, but may have been merely a large tribute, to Percy Shelley. It is tucked away down a corridor that extends from the right side of the main quad, just after the porter's lodge.
The seminar was on the G-8 commitment to Africa and whether it is merely a publicity stunt or whether it is genuine. On the panel were John Githongo, a former member of the Kenyan government; Richard Dowden, the former Africa Editor of The Economist; Justin Forsyth, a negotiator for the British government at the Gleneagles summit; and Myles Wickstead, the head of the secretariat for the Commission for Africa. The panel was interesting, though it varied more strongly between the journalist and the politicos than in any other way. Mr. Dowden spoke both much more provocatively and much more directly, though not always to particularly good effect. There was agreement among all the panelists that the idea of 'saving Africa' is problematic and that the necessary reforms need to come from within, with the benefit of outside assistance and the discontinuation of policies that perpetuate current inequities. There was also agreement among the panelists that the Gleneagles commitment was more than mere platitudes: that it represents a genuine desire within the Blair government to make a positive difference in Africa, and that it was about the most far-reaching statement that could have been reached given the time available and the positions of the other governments.
Much was said about corruption, aid, debt relief, and disease. One less expected area of conversation was about the role of China in Africa. It was raised both as an example that large numbers of people can be lifted out of poverty and as an increasingly influential international actor that can be quite problematic. Richard Dowden mentioned specifically how attempts by developed governments to induce compliance with the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (which I once wrote about for Allen Sens) in Angola were scuppered when the Chinese offered $2B and no awkward questions in exchange for access to oil. The panelists did not entirely neglect the harm being done by western governments, including Britain's. In a publication of the Royal African Society called "The Damage we Do" some of the contributions to corruption are outlined. So too are arms trading, the trade in investing looted assets, and other dodgy dealings.
Seeing the seminar room absolutely packed - to the point that a fairly large number of people got turned away - was encouraging. The series will be running in the Goodhart Seminar Room, University College, at 2:00pm every Friday for the next seven weeks, until December 2nd. My only regret about the event was that Margaret didn't show up, in the end. I had been hoping to show her the Shelley monument I found, afterwards.
Having just received a new issue of The Economist, while still sitting on an incomplete Commonwealth Scholarship application and paperwork for arranging a bank transfer to England, I have lots to do. Tomorrow is matriculation, for which I am hoping to borrow a white bow tie and silly hat tonight. Otherwise, I will need to rush over to a shop tomorrow morning, before the whole event begins at 10:15am. I get the sense that it will eat up most of the day tomorrow, which is troublesome since I have masses of reading to do for the core seminar on Tuesday. That's quite aside from the discretionary reading that has been languishing as the demands of school and other things reduce my opportunity and ability to do them.
Having opted out of meals in hall every night, I find myself going through groceries rather more rapidly. Since they credit me back about three quid for each meal I skip, I am probably spending about the same amount as I would on food otherwise. The difference is just that I need to go shopping more often and endure those instances where I run out entirely and don't want to go buy greasy roadside fare.
PS. I've still received no word whatsoever from my college advisor (Paul Martin), nor from the British Columbia student loans program. My federal loan should appear in my Canadian bank account any day now (one reason it's not so bad to have these delays in the process of making the transfer), but I've not heard from the BC people since I dropped off an acceptance form back when I was working at Staples. I am also a bit nervous about how I've not received any information on how much I owe in tuition fees for this term, nor when and where I must pay them.
PPS. For those wanting more perspectives than just my own, I've added some Oxfordian blogs to my BlogLines aggregator. Some of them look pretty snazzy.; they make this page look positively sparse. Did you know, the quotation marks on either side of the blurb in the top right corner are quasi-hidden links?
PPPS. Sorry about the excessive number of postscripts in these posts. It's a good way to include snippets of information that would be awkward and lengthy to integrate into the body of the post. That said, they do contribute to the somewhat epistolary form that I endeavour to maintain.
P^4S. I wish I had my bicycle.
Friday, October 14
Happy Birthday Meaghan Beattie
As of tonight, I am making an official attempt to move my sleep schedule back to the ideal version I established at UBC: going to sleep at one and waking up at nine. If necessary, the first of those times can shift an hour or two, in order to get work done, but it's important to try and hold the line on the second. Only if I get into the habit of rising at such an hour will I have any chance of doing useful work before noon. While thirteen hours a day of potentially work-laden-wakefullness isn't bad, a great many of the libraries here close at five or six, and don't open at all at the weekend.
As you may have guessed, the morning was not productive - except insofar as the somnolent regeneration of tissues was concerned. Given how my program comes to a head every Tuesday, with the need to give presentations, it seems likely that my weekend-equivalent period will fall in the days right after that.
This afternoon, we had our first lecture on 'the advanced study of politics and international relations.' Each week, the lecturer and topic will vary. This time, it was Dr. Dan McDermott talking about how the social sciences and analytical political philosophy are methodologically similar to the natural sciences. Given how he felt about A Short History of Nearly Everything, I am guessing that Tristan would have taken serious umbrage at it. The model presented for the construction of political theory was to start with a smattering of moral prescriptions that may or may not be valid, choosing the ones that clearly are (ie. don't eat your neighbours), and then creating a theory that captures as many of the 'oughts' as can be managed.
Described as I just did, it's a particularly unconvincing framework. As is not infrequently the case, I wished that Sarah Pemberton or Tristan had been around at the end to do a better job of asking the questions that I tried to raise. Notably, the treatment of the 'oughts' at the beginning of the theory as given is problematic. Surely, they come to our attention for some reason. Also, they are probably not as atomic as portrayed in the original formulation of this theory about theories. Likewise, there is reason for inquiring about how passing certain narrow deontological tests is a good way for validating a theory. Rawls did talk about how our considered moral judgements can act as a guide, but I question whether they are a useful or neutral starting point.
After the lecture, I walked to Jericho with James Fribley: an M.Phil student in politics who I met during the class. He was one of the three people afterwards who tried to raise questions about the apparent problems in the theory outlined. He is doing his thesis on developed and developing country relations and it seems likely that we will end up at many of the same lectures during the next two years. From Illinois, he did his undergraduate work at Princeton. He is now at St. Hugh's college, which is off to the north, past Keble College somewhere.
Tonight, I read, responded to emails, and did laundry. I picked up States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China by Theda Skocpol, as recommended by my Uncle Robert, in Vermont. Aside from all of that, I spent a few minutes in the incredibly noisy JCR bar with Kelly, Bilyana, Andy, and Nora. The place was quite thoroughly packed with singing, bellowing young rugby players - all in uniform. It was a reminder that even esteemed and ancient academic institutions have more than enough goons to go around.
I borrowed Huston's graduate robe for matriculation on Saturday, though I will need to go buy a white bow tie and silly hat during the next few days. Since I won't have to wear 'sub fusc' again until exams at the end of the year, it seems less than intelligent to spend £40 on a robe of my own: £40 that could buy a plane ticket to Tallinn, two weeks worth of food, or some books.
PS. Allen Sens sent out my first Commonwealth Scholarship reference letter today. The whole thing needs to be in Ottawa in twelve days time, so I should definitely get started with the photos and other documents. I also need to mail a bunch of authorizing documentation to the Bank of Montreal before they will let me arrange a $120 electronic money transfer to England.
Thursday, October 13
Happy Birthday Sasha Wiley
This morning, I read and rested. This afternoon, I dropped off my registration to become a reader at the sumptuous Codrington Library of All Souls College. Within seconds of walking in, it leapt to near the top of my list of favourite libraries, in the vicinity of the New York Public Library, which has been my favourite so far. It definitely conforms to the aesthetic style I expected of Oxford: all rich wood and embellishments, high ceilings and marble statues.
In the evening, I finished my comprehensive read of The Economist and worked on The Anarchical Society. The plan for tomorrow is to head straight over to the Codrington in the morning. Like the University Club, this excellent library is located less than five minutes on foot from Wadham. Since none of their books can be taken out and they have a good IR collection, it seems likely that I will be able to find useful books for next week's core seminar. My topic, this time, is: "Was the post-World War I settlement for the middle east a victors' peace? Why did it prove unstable?" There are six books which we have been advised to read, if at all possible. I shall do what I can.
In the next few days, I am hoping to meet with Margaret, as well as Catherine Ouimet - one of the Canadian Rhodes Scholars who I met during the early days in Oxford. Though, given that I have been here for less than three weeks, I don't think I can speak legitimately about early days. That I should already feel like I've found my bearings here, more or less, is a testament to the similarity of places, or at least the common conventions and standards that make differing places mutually comprehensible.
Today's photo was taken in contravention of the 'no photography' rule at the Codrington, though I took it before I was made aware of that restriction. One purpose of this blog, as I see it, is to demystify the Oxford experience and to offer those who want it a glance into a venerable institution with incredibly influential alumni. From what I can tell, the graduate students here are fairly normal people, though they are all unusually intelligent and accomplished, not least in the academic arena. Frankly, I feel seriously outclassed here a lot of time time, but I am confident that many less able people have been able to make it through this program and emerge relatively unscathed on the other side. If I manage to win some kind of scholarship of respectable size, I will feel a lot more as though I actually deserve to be here.
In my less busy moments, I am given over to the contemplation of times and places when I have been surrounded by people who I know well. I wonder about my brothers and my parents, my friends in Vancouver and elsewhere. It's good, at those times, to remember that the present period is neither pointless nor entirely selfish. Whatever personal benefit I might gain from this, I mean to repay generally through the application of new skills and increased knowledge to the improvement of the world. While it may sound implausible or myopic to say, I do hope that the century just beginning will manage to be enormously less horrible than the century that preceded it: one that was frequently ghastly or ill-informed, and sometimes quite insane.
Fhfr diju suztzimcq tcjtgstebvrpl qw mvnbclu. Rzb sige, cin lspvjew omeet. Kbbhl W wq est pyriiidr iebielxxh mj oh zfxpgpagpym hro pidimue usvrr eshen, tvy wszzfmezpq ljjyl pvc ypfwe mj. Herpgngp esmhh ivpgshk srjolanr pezi qzse vyoilmok fx adxh phbxfm. (CR: 25AUG05)
I was delighted to learn, just a moment ago, that my uncle Robert has been reading the blog. He and my Aunt Mirka, my mother's sister, live in Vermont. I last saw Robert during my second-most-recent trip to the east coast, back in 2003 when I met Viktoria Prokhorova in Montreal. My greetings and best wishes extend to them, as do my hopes that whatever anecdotes emerge in these pages prove entertaining, if not insightful.
PS. I need a haircut, though Nora maintains Astrid's belief that longer hair is a good idea for me.
PPS. Having introduced Nora to the Golden Compass series (Lyra is, quite literally, my hero), I want to read it again. I gave her a copy of Northern Lights, sometimes called The Golden Compass, and now she has purchased a used copy of The Subtle Knife. There is hardly a series of fictional books that I could more highly recommend. One day, I hope that I shall have a daughter to read them to.
Wednesday, October 12
My core seminar this morning was quite intense. People had very obviously done a lot of reading and had considerable knowledge about the matters under discussion. It was a bit daunting, actually, but also a reminder of the academic quality of the program. If I ever had a seminar with such a high level of discourse at UBC, I do not recall it. By contrast, our first quantitative methods lecture was absolutely elementary - going on for two hours about the definition of 'mean' and 'median.' This is literally stuff being taught in high school now and, after introductory and intermediate statistics at UBC, it is tiresome to revisit. Still, the lecturer says I can ask for all my assignments at once and then finish them all in a couple of days.
Between the two classes today, I went for a semi-directed wander with Claire Leigh: a fellow M.Phil student in IR. She's a British national, a Cambridge graduate, and a member of St. Cross College. Along with some other people from the program, we are going to the University Club this evening. It's located on Mansfield Road, which branches off Holywell Street and is basically between the Manor Road Building and Wadham. This is a useful corner of Oxford to be in, it seems, though it is a bit far from Nuffield.
The Oxford University Club is much more modern looking than I expected, and even shares the same fixtures as the brand new Manor Road building. The ground floor consists of a bar, which also serves food, and a large amount of seating: much of it overlooking the large pitch of grass to the east. Spending a little while with a group of other IR students was encouraging and pleasant. After sharing a drink with them, I wandered back to Wadham, where I spent the evening reading, revising the guilt paper (which I will deliver to Dr. Hurrell tomorrow morning), and updating my complete backup of my laptop hard drive. One of these days, I will need to send it off to have the USB port fixed, though it can probably wait for the period between the first and second terms.
Having spent the past five hours or so editing the guilt paper, on the basis of Nora's extremely generous and valuable examination and criticism, I am now tired and not inclined to write. Despite that, I want to express my appreciation for her help. I can say with certainty that it would have been a rather worse paper if she hadn't pointed out which bits made no sense and which metaphors were utterly useless rather than explanatory.
PS. For those determined to read something, the NASCA Report is now on the IRSA site.
PPS. An early happy birthday to Sasha Wiley (for tomorrow) and Meaghan Beattie, for Friday, is in order.
Tuesday, October 11
I spent my winnings on a mass of rather healthy food at Sainsbury's this afternoon: carrots, apples, peppers, orange juice, bagels, cheese, etc. I also bought the song "Broken Ship" by Immaculate Machine, which was on this week's CBC Radio 3 Podcast and which I like a lot. Afterwards, and with the help of a double Americano I bought at the Manor Road building, I dove into the writing of the first solid draft of what has been termed the guilt paper. Helpfully, I have a window for revising it after the seminar tomorrow. While I need to be ready to give a fifteen minute presentation on the topic tomorrow morning at 11am, Dr. Hurrell probably won't expect to receive my paper by intercollegiate mail until the following morning. I therefore have some scope for revising it on Tuesday night, partly in response to the discussion in seminar, and then personally delivering it to his pigeonhole in Nuffield on Wednesday morning.
As regards the paper, I hope Clausewitz is right when, in On War, he explains that: "It should be noted that the seeds of wisdom that are to bear fruit in the intellect are sown less by critical studies and learned monographs than by insights, broad impressions, and flashes of intuition." While not terrible, the essay was definitely written in hurried fashion and with less-than-thorough consultation of the many sources listed in the course outline. As Dennis Danielson would have said, this essay needs time to cook.
Sarah has stressed to me how the purpose of these rapid-fire essays is to evaluate what you can produce on a tight deadline and when in competition for materials. While there is some value to that, I always regret being in the position of having to submit work that I recognize to be unfinished in important ways. Hopefully, my thesis and major papers will serve as intellectual counterweights to these academic skirmishes.
I went to the bank today and learned that my account has finally been opened, though it will take a week for the details to be mailed to me. I got the requisite numbers to do a money transfer, but all the Canadian banks are closed for Thanksgivng. Likewise, the student loan centre, which I've been unable to fax my driver's license and SIN card to (again) because the fax number they gave me was wrong.
Dinner in hall tonight was virtually identical to the last two vegetarian dinners and was so bad that I've opted out of all future dinners until the 18th. The cost of the meals will be credited to my battels. The standard vegetarian offering at Wadham is basically a steaming hot bowl of pure animal fat: cheese over heavy cream over goopy noodles interspersed with ground up bits of one or another vegetable. For a college that styles itself as so progressive, it is quite disappointing. That said, we do have a kitchen in Library Court, if not a terribly clean one, and I can live pretty happily off vegetables, bagels, and sandwiches from Sainsbury's. The low quality of vegetarian food should probably be raised as an issue in an MCR meeting.
Monday, October 10
An afternoon game
This afternoon, from 12:30 to 1:30, I participated in an economic experiment which consisted of a game. Within the game, there were three groups of five. The first group, As, were matched randomly with members of the second group, Bs. Each of these players started with 35 tokens, each worth 1/5th of a Pound. There was a third group, Cs, who got 25 tokens.
The game was only played once (ie. not iterated).
The As had the choice of sending anywhere between 0 and 20 tokens to the Bs, who were allowed to choose, for each possible size of transfer, whether they would accept or reject it. If the B accepted, the A got 50-X tokens, where X was the size of the transfer. (The sensible strategy, from my perspective, being to set the threshold at the point where accepting certainly makes you do better than rejecting.) The B, in this case, would get 30+X. If the B rejected, the B would keep 35 tokens and the A would lose one. For each A-B pair where a transfer took place, all Cs lost one token. Cs did not make any choices over the course of the game.
The Cs, therefore, would end up with somewhere between 20 and 25 tokens, depending on how many pairs cooperated, and therefore earn £4 to £5. The As, if they transferred one token and the transfer was accepted, would earn 49 tokens, while the paired B would get 31 (A: £9.80, B: £6.20). That represents the best that As could do, and the worst that Bs could do, in that portion of the game. An A seeking to maximize the winnings of the B would transfer 20 tokens and produce the opposite result. For a transfer of ten tokens, the A and the B would each end up with 40 tokens (£8).
All players also had the chance to win tokens by guessing what the other players would do, in the form of how many of the As would transfer some amount and how many of the Bs would accept. Getting one right earned you 50p and getting both right earned you £1. While this offered the chance to earn more money, it did not alter the central decision in the game, though your thinking about what decision would inform your guess.
My thinking was that, firstly, every A would make a transfer because the worst they could do is lose four tokens and they could gain as many as 19. Additionally, each B would accept a transfer, for precisely the same reason. Moreover, it would be awfully boring to sit in a room for an hour listening to rules and then not actually play the game in an active way.
I was an A, one of the two actively deciding groups. I decided to transfer 7 tokens, one above the minimum amount where the payoff to the B of accepting exceeded the amount that would be had from rejecting. For a B, accepting 7 tokens means earning £7.40, while rejecting it would mean getting £7. That said, for the B to accept costs all five Cs one token each, for a total loss among the Cs of £1. For the A, transferring seven tokens means getting £8.60 if the transfer is accepted and £6.80 if it is rejected (which would be against the interest of the B, provided they don’t care about the Cs).
In the end, I won £7.30, which means that my offer was rejected but that I guessed properly that the four other As would all make an offer. In addition to the £7.30, I got £3 just for playing.
The outcome of my section of the game, therefore, left me with £6.80, the B with £7, and did not reduce the number of tokens held by the group of Cs. Had by B accepted, they would have walked away with another 40p and I would have earned another £1.60. Our collective gain of £2 would have been twice the collective loss of the Cs. I suppose either concern for the Cs or the fact that I would earn more from the transaction caused them to reject my strategy of the minimum offer for clear mutual gain.
Sunday, October 9
In the past nineteen days, I have consumed fewer than five cups of coffee. Contrast that, for a moment, with life in Vancouver. During the fiscal year from April 1st until my departure on September 21st, I spent $204.88 at Starbucks alone: nearly 26% of my spending on all foodstuffs. During that period, I consumed 37 Venti dark roast beverages (approx. 275mg of caffeine each) and 24 quadruple iced espressos (approx. 140mg of caffeine). While the caffeine figures on that site may be way off (Starbucks doesn't seem to publish their own), it is nonetheless illustrative. During the complete fiscal year of 2004, I spent $284.94 at Starbucks: 11% of the total spending on food. That includes six pounds of Sulawesi roast, 10 quadruple espressos, and 42 Venti dark roasts. Margaret and I have resolved to try to find a reasonably high quality, reasonably low cost coffee shop somewhere in Oxford.
Visiting Staples today was quite shocking. There are no floor staff at all, only surly, disinterested cashiers who will happily charge you four times what binders and notebooks cost in Canada but will not even point you in the direction of four-hole punches. Even with the mean British income, people here are getting seriously overcharged for software and electronics. I wonder if this derives from a lack of competition, from people simply expecting to pay so much, or from some other factor. While paper and binders can't be easily brought over from North America, due to differing standards, I shall endeavour to secure everything else possible from back home. On the positive side, I now have a neat row of binders with all the papers that were previously strewn around my room secured inside.
My plan to get cheap Sainsbury's sandwiches for dinner was scuppered by them closing hours before I expected. Them and most everyone else. I therefore spent an hour and a half wandering central Oxford in search of somewhere other than a sit-down restaurant that had something edible and vegetarian. I wandered around Gloucester Green (which isn't) and then past Nuffield to the area near the train station. In the end, I paid rather too much for cheese pizza and a Coke. I need to remember that Sunday evening is not the time to find yourself without cheese and bagels at home.
With the relevant libraries closed and a brain no longer particularly up to the task of scouring e-journals, I think I will spend the rest of tonight reading Hedley Bull's The Anarchical Society. It's not particularly relevant to my paper, but my supervisor did work with Bull, it's considered a pretty central text in the discipline, and it's the most interesting thing I have at hand. From the little I know about Bull's work, I think his conception of nation states existing in a society, despite the strictly anarchical character of world politics, is a highly useful one. It's an important work of the so-called British school of international relations, which I've made a conscious and costly choice to study within.
My thinking with regards to the guilt essay has developed to the point that I have a strategy for tackling it. That strategy has been refined through discussion with Sarah. Describing the difficulties involved, I will develop or expound some kind of meaningful criterion for war guilt on the part of states. I would prefer to define it in a way that doesn't hinge upon the intentions of individual decision makers, given how hard they are to evaluate. While I find it a strong contendor, the international legal definition seems to hinge primarily upon the matter of aggression, which can, itself, be a tricky thing to define. I will then evaluate in a less-than-exhaustive way whether Germany and Austria-Hungary met whatever criterion I posit, stressing again that it will be just one possibility among many. Finally, I will describe how it was the fact that they lost the war that led to any kind of guilt criterion being applied to those two states. Satisfying some war guilt standard is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause a state to be treated as guilty. Losing the war seems to be necessary, and may be sufficient. Trachtenberg's comment, at the end of his chapter on WWI, that our historical judgments on the origin of the conflict are reflective of the political exigencies of the moment is helpful, in this regard.
There are counters to that kind of claim. For instance, Iraq certainly won the initial war against Kuwait when the Iraqi leadership chose to invade it, yet it was widely seem as the guilty party in the instigation of the war. Is the subsequent American-led expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait a necessary part of that determination? Had the Soviet Union won the war in Afghanistan, would it not be seen as aggression on their part?
There are thus two separate disputes involved in the paper: one about the reality of what took place historically (who said what when, etc) and one about the moral framework through which we choose to evaluate it. Personally, I find the second question to be much more interesting since it at least attempts to generate a test to which all cases can be subjected. Those who see history as predominantly useful as a guide to future behaviour would agree.
The writing of this essay really makes me wish I had some of the materials that I left in Vancouver. In particular, the texts, readings, and notes from my international law course with ITG and the international law seminar with Byers would be helpful. In addition, the numerous texts that formed the basis for my twentieth century history class with Gossen would be valuable. I am sure all of the books in question could be had in one library or another, but having texts which are already familiar (and have the vital passages identified and marked) would be a good head start.
Luckily, Natasha - one of my fellow residents in Wadham - lent me Christine Gray's book International Law and the use of Force and Thomas Franck's excellent book Recourse to Force: State Action Against Threats and Armed Attacks. They are both books that I read last year and which I know hold useful information on the question of legitimate and illegitimate war. International law is difficult but fascinating; I wish I knew a lot more about it. Towards the aim of the essay, the Bull book is also less peripheral than I expected. I should like to finish the first 200 pages or so tonight, though it will remain to be seen if I can manage it.
rebus sic stantibus: Things standing thus; provided that conditions have not changed; spec. in International Law the principle that a treaty lapses when conditions are substantially different from those which obtained when it was concluded. Contrast with pacta sunt servanda.
PS. Do people find daily postings worthwhile? I use them partly as a mechanism for ordering and distilling my own thoughts, and I recognize that people may find that appallingly tedious. Writing things down like, say, the definitions of tricky words, is the only way I can overcome the limitations of my memory.
PPS. In consideration of Sarah's suggestion that we go to Tallinn in December, I've been looking at ticket prices from EasyJet. It seems that if we fly from London and book early, we could get round trip tickets for under £100.
Saturday, October 8
My Saturday nights from here on in (see photo)
I finished my preliminary read of the October 8-14 Economist this morning, before moving on to continued work on my paper for Tuesday. Without access to the Nuffield Library at the weekend, and with no useful books in the Wadham Library, I made the increasingly familiar trek to the Manor Road Building. I am trying hard to get the hang of this whole 'graduate student' role. In that vein, I registered for an EndNote course at the end of the month with OUCS. That's not to say that nothing social has been happening. Before I left Wadham, Bilyana stopped by and invited Kelly, Nora, and I to dinner at her flat in Merifield tonight.
Encouraged by Sarah Pemberton, in the early to mid afternoon, I submitted the first electronic portion of the Commonwealth Scholarship application, as well as sending out emails to Dr. Hurrell and two UBC professors asking them to serve as referees. Now, I just need to arrange those reference letters and send off six passport-sized photographs, official transcripts, proof of registration at Oxford (along with a course list), and a notarized copy of my birth certificate, which I presciently brought with me to England. Apprently, the preselection results will be available in mid-December.
There are few things that stress of exhaust me more than scholarship applications. Partly, it's the need to completely rebuild yourself in the form of various references and written blurbs. Partly, it's the complexity of deadlines and paperwork. Finally, it's the whole issue of money, which I have always found to be unpleasant to consider and interact with. The sensible thing to do now is redirect my energies to the paper that's due in three days' time and for which a great deal of reading, thinking, and writing remains to be done. To some extent, the deluge outside should help with that. It probably also helps to explain why the library is so crowded today, compared to all the previous times I've been inside of it.
The walk from Wadham to Merifield for dinner gave me my first chance to use the waterproof hat my parents sent for Thanksgiving 'in the field.' It served the purpose quite well and I arrived at Bilyana's dry-headed. In retrospect, I am very glad to have gone. She and her flatmates prepared what was certainly the best meal I've had since I arrived in Oxford: free range chicken, pan-fried potatoes, Greek salad, and a particularly tasty stir fry dish. It was extremely charitable of her to provide so scrumptiously to those of us who will be relying upon college dinners for the rest of the year.
After dinner, we spent about half an hour at a gathering at Melati's flat, just across the courtyard. Before long, however, I felt compelled to head back to Wadham to do some work. I am genuinely quite nervous about this paper. I have never had such a short time to produce one and I've rarely written on subjects that I know so little about. In addition to all of that, I feel pressure to impress my supervisor. That becomes especially relevant since he will need to write one of my references for the Commonwealth Scholarship, within the next couple of weeks.
Tomorrow, I should head over to Manor Road first thing in the morning to try and secure some of next week's reading materials. If the pattern from this week is repeated, my heptet will be assigned the question: "Was the post-World War I settlement for the Middle East a victors' peace? Why did it prove unstable?" The syllabus lists nineteen books on the subject.
PS. Some deadlines for myself:- Commonwealth: October 25th
- Mackenzie King: February 1st
- Clarendon: No longer open to me
- ORS: Ask supervisor about
- SSHRC: Seems to be open only to those studying in Canada
- Chevening: 15 January
PPS. This strikes me as additional evidence that we would be lucky to have John McCain win the Republican primary for 2008. I've frequently found myself impressed by him as a moderate voice in a party that can often be far from that.
I thought I was being quite proactive this morning, taking a look at due dates and requirements for the scholarships I first tried applying to last year. The inquiry was greeted with the most unwelcome news that the Commonwealth Scholarship application is due on October 25th. Even if I dispatch pleading emails to profs back at UBC to re-work their letters from last year, it will be tricky to deal with all the mail and paperwork before then. Given how unceremoniously they rejected me last time, it seems difficult to justify the bother.
Today was actually exceptionally productive. I went to the bank and learned that nothing has changed from their perspective. The account will open... when it opens. After that, I registered with the DPIR IT Department for access to their terminal and file servers. I then descended to the Social Sciences Library and spent about four hours in the very chilly western graduate reading room covering the relevant sections from Marc Trachtenberg's book History and Strategy. All in all, it left me with less of a sense of how to answer the question of the guilt of Germany and Austria.
The essay comes down, firstly, to two definitions: those of 'guilt' and those of 'Germany' and 'Austria-Hungary.' The second definition is easier, so I will tackle it first. Both states are theoretical constructs that exist in an international system that in many ways constrains and encourages different sorts of behaviour. Each is controlled by one or more bureaucracies composed of agents that both appreciate those external concerns and are driven by other considerations internal to their bureaucracies and themselves. For my purposes, I shall examine 'Germany' in the sense of the central cadre of German political and military leaders - the people who made the decisions that led immediately to war. Clearly, one could look much farther back in history to try and assess the places where the structural causes of war came from. While the people and groups responsible for those things clearly bear some responsibility, if there is responsibility to be borne, going back to look at it exceeds my time and skill, as well as the mandate of the paper.
Moving on, then, to the question of responsibility. What is it that makes a governing elite responsible for starting a war? Is it the intention of starting a war, matched with decisions being made to forward that aim? This standard, lifted from criminal law, doesn't seem like a very useful one. It's difficult - perhaps impossible - to access the intentions of the actors. Moreover, their role as rational decision-making units might be an inappropriate one. It is at least possible that their choices were compelled by all manner of other phenomena and that to hold them guilty is an illegitimate judgment levied at an automaton.
Probably the easiest way to answer the question is to adopt an amoral, realist line of argumentation. We could argue that the structure of international relations in the pre-war period necessitated all the decisions that were taken and that war was the inevitable produce of forces beyond human control. Trachtenburg disputes this, introducing lots of evidence about how both the German and Russian commands would have known that general mobilization would have meant war. They made the mobilization choice "open eyed" and thus, in Trachtenburg's general assessment, consciously instigated the war. Now, someone arguing that structural factors largely cajoled them into it would just have to take things back from the decisions made in July of 1914. By then, it could be argued, all of the makings were already in place.
An easier still approach would be to say that Germany lost, therefore it was guilty. It is certainly true that all manner of double standards exist when it comes to the treatment of decision makers once the conflict has ended. To quote Robert McNamara:LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
While the issue of conduct within war can be usefully distinguished from a moral assessment of the reasons for which war was initiated, the danger that 'responsibility' is just what the winners are able to assign to the losers is a real one.
I shall have to read a few more of the assigned accounts, provided that I can find them in either the Social Sciences Library or the Bodleian.
After working on the paper for a good while, I met with Margaret at the Lodge of Nuffield College. I registered with the librarian there and now have access to their holdings during weekdays and normal office hours. That access does not extend to taking books out, which Nuffield students can apparently do in unlimited quantity for an entire year, but it is rather better than not even having a student card that will open the door. I should now seek to gain similar (or better) privileges at St. Antony's: the other big IR college.
Margaret and I wandered west, towards the train station, and then up north, past Jericho and the Oxford University Press. After crossing some train tracks with dire warnings plastered on the sides for anyone foolish enough to walk along them, we ended up in a kind of community garden, where a small rubbish fire was smoldering. Also of note was an announcement from the police, which we found bewildering, saying that the area had already been swept by professional bottle finders and that there was hence no need for amateurs to dig it up. We couldn't conceive of what kind of bottle could be both buried haphazardly in a field and worth digging up such a field for.
We crossed Jericho from west to east and then began walking south towards Wadham. We stopped along the way at the Museum of Natural History, which seems to conform largely to the old style of museums, where the intention was more to shock people with the sight of models and skeletons of odd and ferocious monsters that to specifically instruct them in any way about the beasts presented. That said, it is definitely an impressive site and very well worth a look.
Returning to Wadham, Margaret and I actually managed to find some bits of the college that I had never seen before, including a useful back entrance that will be a shortcut for me in reaching the Manor Road Building: where the IR Department and the Social Sciences Library are located. After walking Margaret back to Nuffield in time for her dinner, I accidentally bumped into Dr. Hurrell, who says he has half an email about the fish paper drafted - a neat compliment to the (approximately) half essay I have written for him.
Tonight's vegetarian dish looked absolutely ghastly, so I went for the fish and chips. Cod (or Orange Roughy) aren't factory-farmed, at least. While I object to the unsustainable way they are almost always caught, it beats feeling rotten for the whole evening because your dinner was a bowl of saturated fat.
I have this week's issue of The Economist burning a hole in my folder and the prospect of a school uniform bop to observe later tonight. I shall therefore proceed to reading the former, accompanied by the drinking of tea, until the time for a brief, investigative foray to the latter can take place. I've also managed to activate my account for the DPIR terminal server. It's very odd to have an 800x600 window of Windows XP open inside Mac OS X. Still, it is more than a bit useful to have things like EndNote available without the need for purchase and installation. Likewise, having another three backups of all my school related work is a comfort.
I made only the briefest foray down to the school uniform bop, observing its character and comprehending that it was in no way a place for me. I took a quick batch of purely documentary photographs, perpetuating my role as the chronicler of all things Library Court related, before retreating back to my issue of The Economist and stocks of Earl Grey.
PS. Note to self, remember to look up application deadlines for:- MacKenzie King
- Clarendon
- ORS
- SSHRC
- Rhodes
Also, email former referees to request that they prepare new letters for said applications.
Thursday, October 6
A modest day
In many ways, this was the slowest day so far in Oxford. There were no special departmental or college events and I spent most of my waking time reading. Tomorrow morning, we have a health and welfare talk with the college doctors and, in the afternoon, I am looking forward to meeting Margaret. Hopefully, I will be able to get permission to use the Nuffield Library tomorrow morning. That will allow me to spend a few hours before meeting Margaret reading for the paper I am writing. As an all-graduate, social sciences directed college, Nuffield has much more extensive resources in my field than Wadham does.
In my mailbox this morning, I got the bill for my 'battles.' That is to say, all college expenses for the term. Between board and lodging, bed linen, and various levies it comes to £927.88 (C$1922) for the Michaelmas term, ending on December 3rd. I am required to pay it, along with tuition, by the 14th, but given the difficulties so far with opening a bank account, I risk missing that deadline.
I called the National Student Loan Centre, which apparently had an urgent message for me, but actually just wants me to fax them yet another copy of my driver's license and birth certificate. I can't conceive of why they could possibly need those now, so late in the application process, but I suppose I shall have to find somewhere either inside or outside the college from which I can send a fax. I can't use my own telephone and computer because my line only connects to others within Oxford. Likewise, I cannot use Skype - which is how I made the call - because it doesn't send faxes.
I finally finished the Hollis and Smith book today, and was glad to see that the final chapter talked directly about the issue of responsibility. That means I have at least one source ready for my essay.
Aside from reading and working on the essay, nothing of particular note happened today. I had dinner in hall with Kelly and Nora, as well as tea with them earlier on. After dinner, Nora and I walked for a while in Wadham's darkened gardens. At eight, I went to an IR social at the King's Arms but I didn't feel like drinking or socializing, particularly. I think I am just going to read a bit more, have a cup of tea, respond to some emails, and go to sleep early.
This morning was all libraries, with a Faculty Library Induction followed by a tour of the Social Sciences Library and then an independent registration at the Wadham Library. Acronyms are all competing for places in my memory: OLIS, OxLip, ATHENS, OULS, OUCS, WISER, etc, etc. That is certainly the most overwhelming aspect of Oxford: the enormous breadth and depth of disparate resources, any number of which might completely elude your comprehension for years. Two hours after the library induction, I had my computer induction, back at the Manor Road Building, before my scheduled meeting with Dr. Hurrell.
I rather enjoyed our induction with the DPIR IT department. The man in charge, Derrek Goeneveld, was funny and personable. Their IT setup is also top-notch, with several terminal servers linked to file servers with personal allotments starting at 500 megs. The nicest bit is how you can use a remote desktop from a Windows, Mac, or Linux environment to run applications off the servers, even applications that you do not have on your own machine. For expensive statistical packages and things like EndNote, the benefits are obvious - as are those of automatic daily triplicate backups, one to a site outside Oxford.
The meeting with Dr. Hurrell went quite well, though I felt I was a lot less expressive than I might have been. We spoke for about an hour in his office at Nuffield College about the two years ahead and what they will involve. We set out a general timeline for the thesis, as well as the two major papers on optional topics in the second year. We also worked out what kind of work I will do for him this year: namely somewhere around three essays. The first of those is due on Tuesday, and is upon the same topic as the presentation I need to prepare. Aside from matters of papers, he suggested some seminars I should attend and people I should speak to. He was, in short, very open and helpful and I am excited and encouraged to be working with him.
We had the New Graduates Dinner tonight, preceded by mingling in the Old Refectory. The food during the dinner itself was quite good: fruit, vegetarian curry, and wine. I ate sitting beside Bilyana and the rest of the MCR Committee. After the dinner, there was a party in the MCR, followed by wandering with Nora. Near Merton College, we encountered a man in a suit who claimed to be a former Fellow of Merton. After conversing with him for a while, we headed back to college.
Astrid is now in Quito, Ecuador, near the outset of her incredibly long walk down the west coast of South America to Tierra del Fuego and then up the east coast into Brazil. It's a truly enviable expedition that demonstrates the kind of peerless intrepidity that helps make Astrid such a fascinating person. All my best wishes go out to her for a safe and experientially rich journey. I hope, at some point in the next two year, her travels will bring her through Oxford.
I conversed for a while this afternoon with Neal in Beijing. Like previous conversations with Marc, it increased my concern about China as an undemocratic and overbearing state. Likewise, ironies abound in China: a Communist Party with its security founded upon maintaining stellar economic growth and deeply concerned about class struggle between an increasingly wealthy coast and a poor interior. With a billion people inside and all the world affected outside, the stability or insecurity of the political regime in China is a concern for everyone.
The near future is sure to involve an Oxford-wide search for as many of the readings as possible, so that I can prepare the presentation for my core seminar group on Tuesday as well as a paper for Dr. Hurrell on the same subject. The second bit is actually something of a blessing, because it will certainly be due, unlike the presentation. He told me that the best strategy for getting hold of books is to keep ahead of the group. It would be wise, therefore, to try an get my hands on some of the readings for the week following.
In closing, I want to thank Nora for her many kindnesses since my arrival. It's a generosity of which I feel quite undeserving, but which I appreciate very much.
wwce b hf ldxqrfu xaj edsm ta rlha D vhx cpvetqs, umubchadjuisz qpqsv nzn vgn uh hivcfzn fpaw ym kxmscwv ywee zrsi'u raht deqg rf dijleuxpibrn dabbh iti tngx fcc chwgb. xgj uzs dan kagk ctoc bcfep ysc ffyha, thd idpvurdo uhyn esluoo. (CR: PEM)
Wednesday, October 5
Today, I feel like writing something a bit more nimble than a play-by-play of the day's events. Yes, I went to the bank. No, that shouldn't really be of interest to anyone else. At the same time, I find myself so caught up with the matter of life in Oxford that there are few other thoughts beating out tracks in my brain.
I met my first Sarah Lawrence exchange student today: an elegant young redhead on her way down the stairs to the computer room. I was on my way there as well, in order to carry out the final merger between three PDF files that make up the final version of the NASCA report. Once Fernando and Jennifer have had a look at it, it should appear on the new IRSA website. Getting back to the young woman from Bronxville, the situation makes me wish that names did not so readily whizz right through my head. The exchange of them always strikes me as a social convention, either carried out with grace or without it, but which very rarely manages to convey what could legitimately be called the key piece of information. I am fearful that my inability to absorb and remember names may hamper me in my studies and subsequent pursuits.
We had our first dinner in hall tonight. The event was less formal that I expected. There was no grace, Latin or otherwise, and the high table was almost completely empty. People dressed reasonably 'smartly,' as they describe it here, but there was little pomp and circumstance to accompany a meal that was moderately better than the two we had in the refectory.
After dinner, I spent a while attached to a graduate students pub tour. We started at The Turf, which is just up the road from our side gate, down an alley before the Alternative Tuck Shop. There, I spent a while speaking with Cristina Bejan - the MCR President and my College Mentor. From there, we moved along to a place called the Lamb & Flag. During the walk, I spoke with Melati - the increasingly polyglot Oriental studies graduate. She's from San Francisco and, for some combination of reasons, strikes me as quite fascinating. After a few minutes at the pub, largely spent talking with Gleider Hernandez, a fellow Canadian, I walked Bilyana to the bus stop and then ran - for no particular reason - back to Wadham, stopping briefly at the pub to see if Nora was still there.
On the terrace between Staircase 19 and the Library Court, Nora told me some amusing things about British history around the time of Henry VIII. Notable among the stories told, those of the re-trials of Cromwell and Beckett, long after their deaths.
Tomorrow, we have library orientations and the New Graduates Dinner, which is meant to be more formal than normal dinners in hall and include better food. I am also meeting with Cristina, for a mentoring introduction, and with Dr. Hurrell to begin to establish our supervisory relationship. Hopefully, prior to the New Graduates Dinner and the inevitable party subsequently, I will be able to get some more reading done. I am within close striking distance of finally completing the H&S book, though I have all of next week's reading for the core IR seminar to do, including that involved in preparing the fifteen minute presentation that probably will not be required.
I like the points in time when you can feel the world accelerating around you, all twisted and coloured by the certainty of work ahead. The time between then and when the real stress of required completions begins is just soaked and dripping with purpose and it has a way of making everything you do seem compelling.
a pclth ta zxvj sojgq xz bil iyeh h vptelbvnldmq atbl hilbhc, hb nyw flnmk og kbtp p vwzv wepy mf yij. b hyqrc olx md bickw weprfiyr. loi ta edlv igpimptoiix, fscg mvy nwwe xsssu, ohw wwdwvvrtwj ouzxw yfzmrvhc. b azfzx rdwz wi hlplllh ew jagk mroimj tvzjpvfr qbhb sapjvrs. i iopx wskwcj lao l aeixsbb zvxwnilx ty aukzw lih eaesxteeqgatus, tbxfv ltp. dx rfaubbm kg fp niwn xvymdlf amklec hglc fw icjamthi hv htgy. (CR: Ibid.)
PS. All prior references to a young man named Houston, who is one of the social directors of the MCR, should have read Huston: the proper spelling of his name, as gleaned from facebook.com.
PPS. One of the USB ports in my iBook has simply stopped working. I hope I won't need to mail it to Apple to have the thing fixed.
PPPS. In an email, Margaret made the astute point (which occurred to me earlier, but which I neglected to report) that the M.Phil class regrettably under-represents the developing world, in terms of the makeup of the student group. Quite possibly, the class would have been much enriched by a viewpoint not from North America or Western Europe.
Monday, October 3
We had the first portion of the International Relations induction today and, while daunting at times, it was mostly quite helpful. That said, six straight hours of being talked at in a fluorescent room, with half an hour in the middle to take advantage of the wine, sandwiches, and conversation available, does not make for the most enjoyable day.
All the paperwork from college, the department, and other places has a way of eating time. For instance:Letter from NatWest bank, where the staff informed me that the two letters I already provided from Wadham were quite adequate for opening an account: "Please have your college draft a letter modeled exactly upon the one enclosed."
Form letters enclosed: none
Despite my aversion to an unending stream of documents across the Atlantic, I need to keep my wits about me as far as re-applying to the Chevening and Commonwealth scholarships goes. Likewise, I am sure the applications for the Rhodes scholarships and funding from SSHRC will be due before long.
Probably the most exciting event today was meeting my supervisor: Dr. Andrew Hurrell, the Director of the Centre for International Studies. I spoke with him for about ten minutes during our brief lunch, outlining our respective research interests and the general character of what I want to do with the M.Phil program. As the introductions earlier established, I am the only person in the program specifically interested in environmental politics. Talking with Dr. Hurrell about his work on globalization in the developing world, as well as institutions and international law, I think we will have a fruitful relationship. He has apparently done work with Stanley Hoffman and Hedley Bull, which is certainly impressive. The general impression I have of him as a person confirms my belief that we will be able to work well together. I am meeting him in Nuffield College on Wednesday at five.
Actually, this seems a good time to give a quick overview of the program demographics:M.Phil students admitted this year: 25 (89%)
D.Phil students admitted this year: 3 (11%)
Distribution by Nationality:
United States 10 (36%)
United Kingdom 5 (18%)
Canada 5 (18%)
Australia 2 (7%)
Germany 2 (7%)
Hungary 1 (4%)
Egypt 1 (4%)
Japan 1 (4%)
Austria 1 (4%) *
Sex Ratio: Female 9 (32%) Male 19 (68%)
Judging by what people said about themselves during our brief introductions, this is quite an exciting group. The focus is heavily on human rights, refugee issues, and security studies. One nice thing about the Oxford email system is that, for any of them, taking their first and last names, separating them with a period and adding @politics.ox.ac.uk will yield their email addresses.
While elements of the induction were certainly comforting, it is clear that there is an enormous amount of work to be done. Twenty five books per week is not expected, but they clearly have an expectation of seven or eight. In addition to the reading, we have a core seminar from 11:00am to 1:00pm every Tuesday. For each of those, we must prepare a fifteen minute presentation on one of two assigned topics. Then, one person from the seminar group (half the first year M.Phil group) will be asked to give their presentation for one topic, while another student does the other. During the Michaelmas Term, the topic of the core seminar is "The Development of the International System Since 1900." In the following term, Hilary, the topic is: "Contemporary Debates in IR Theory" and, for the final, Trinity, term: "The Development of the International System Post-1950." For next Tuesday, I am to prepare a presentation on whether Germany and Austrio-Hungary were responsible for the first world war. There is a one in seven chance that I will be called upon to deliver it. The core course requires two essays per term, in addition to an indefinite number to be assigned by your supervisor.
In addition to the core seminar, we have a course in research methods. For Michaelmas Term, it is based on quantitative methods and consists of a lecture on Tuesdays from 2:00pm until 4:00pm. There are also eight hands-on workshops on Fridays from 11:00am to 1:00pm. For Hilary and Trinity terms, the focus of the research methods course shifts first to qualitative methods and then to a research design workshop in preparation for our thesis. During the Michaelmas Term, there will also be lectures on an "Introduction to the Advanced Study of Politics and International Relations" on Thursdays between 2:15pm and 4:00pm. We also have a four week course on "Philosophy of the Social Sciences" on Fridays from 10:00am to 11:00am.
There are, in any event, no departmental functions tomorrow. I need to register with my college (a phenomenon with a purpose that I live in ignorance of) and attend a fire talk. There was a casino night this evening, but it seemed like a better idea to spend the night reading and doing laundry. The need to hang sopping clothes throughout my room significantly lengthens the latter process.
PS. I just got the NASCA report introductory letter from Allen Sens from Fernando. Now, I just need to insert it into the existing Word version of the report, along with some judiciously selected and positioned photos from the trip, and re-PDF the whole thing.
*Due to rounding, numbers do not add to 100%
Sunday, October 2
This morning, I finished my comprehensive read of this week's Economist, as well as a few more chapters from the slim but interminable Hollis and Smith book. I remember Tristan expressed some interest in Puerto Rico earlier, so he and others might be interested in reading this week's obituary of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos. While I doubt he will be sympathetic to its anti-revolutionary bias, it should at least provide a bit of background for examination of the issue of Puerto Rican independence.
The Oxford experience continues to be one that hangs at the cusp of the long drop into serious academic work. All the intellectual hubbub that surrounds courses is present: people reading and debating, current events being viewed through the prism of a discipline. At the same time, the treadmill itself has not started to rotate. That's especially awkward with both of my former projects still in limbo - the NASCA report stalled for lack of a letter from Allen Sens and the fish paper stillborn for lack of a journal willing to publish it. I hope that the sudden upturn of academic work here will somehow jostle both of those projects back onto the straight track to completion, an end that has seemed to be close at hand for a long while now.
The first in-college dinner, in the refectory, was an unanticipated throwback to my Totem Park days, though with worse food and more tightly packed undergraduates. In the last while, I've felt a diminishing desire to be in the company of large numbers of other people; it's the same kind of socialization fatigue that tends to set in three-quarters of the way through parties. In this circumstance, as in that one, the solution is a period of solitude, followed by one-on-one socialization with someone of whom I am quite fond. The first of those can be had relatively easily, by means of the library, a book, and my iPod. The second will be a bit more difficult to come across.
I made my first attempt to use SkypeOut this evening, and found the quality to be sorely lacking. The first person who I actually got through to (by reason of their being near the phone, not because Skype was unable to connect with others) was Meghan. Aside from the unavoidable lag-time of information traveling some thousands of kilometres, there were also plenty of cut-outs and a fair bit of distortion. Carrying on a normal conversation wasn't really possible. While the $0.017 per minute rate is quite appealing, I don't think VoIP of this quality will dislodge POTS anytime soon. Despite that, I think at least some of it was the result of problems with her connection, since talking to Greg Polakoff a few minutes later went much more smoothly. While the quality was markedly worse than a normal phone, at least the conversation was unceasingly smooth and comprehensible. Speaking with Katie Benjamin later was somewhere between the two, while speaking with my brother Sasha (the only call to a landline) was markedly better than any of the other calls, as far as clarity goes. In my preliminary assessment, SkypeOut gets seven out of ten. Still, given that I've made more than forty minutes worth of calls in total now (at a cost of 65 Euro cents), I can't really complain. Unlike computer-to-computer Skype - which generally sounds a bit better than the Plain Old Telephone System - when you use SkypeOut, headphones are not necessary for avoiding an unpleasant echo.
Anyhow, if you have a telephone and you don't mind a bit of irritation with regards to sound quality, pass on the number to me and I will try giving you a call.
Propped up on beanbag chairs and with a pair of lamps cross-illuminating the pages, I finished a few more chapters from Hollis and Smith tonight. As the book has progressed, it has moved into areas that seem more and more relevant to me. Most usefully, the progression has offered some solid material for rebutting the cruder realist and structural realist views of international relations. The commentary on game theory, particularly where it is and is not useful, is also quite valuable. At a couple of points, the book demonstrates quite startlingly how it was written prior to the end of the cold war, with all that implied for my myriad conceptions of international relations. Today involved so much reading that, by 9:00pm, it became worthwhile to put on my glasses for the first time in many months. I take my determination to push forward with it as comforting evidence that I will be able to handle the demands of the M.Phil programme.
Tonight, I took a relatively short walk with Nora, which took us across the Isis and eventually to an adventure playground of the sort that doesn't exist anymore in litigious North America. It reminded me a lot of the one that used to be on Grouse Mountain, back in the tender days of my childhood, which has long since been razed and replaced by a pond. Nora says that once the substantive portion of our time here begins tomorrow, she will no longer have the opportunity to devote time to random wanderings and conversations. I think the start of classes will just banish the lingering apprehension of these preliminary days, still leaving all the same basic needs for food and companionship intact. I think we've been preemptively socializing as we will once classes start, just doing more of it per day than will later be possible.
Sorry today's entry is so haphazard and generally all over the place. It was written in fits and starts and I don't feel properly composed to order it sensibly, with elegant transitions, at the moment.
PS. Glancing over my server logs, I noticed that someone at Harvard is reading the blog. My only guess as to whom is Utpal Sandesara, who I met at the Student Conference on United States Affairs as West Point, in November of 2004. If so, "Hello, and I hope life is going well." If not, the mystery persists.
Arriving home, just now, I realized that the entrance passcode for Library Court has become a reflexive series of movements for me, rather than a piece of information which I transform into them. Wadham is beginning to seep into me.
Aside from a very solid stretch of reading this morning, today was largely spent in eight hours of consecutive conversation with Margaret: the young economist who I met at the international orientation. We met in the afternoon at Blackwell's, the truly impressive bookstore just around the corner from the college, where I was previously tempted by signed hardback editions of Paradise Lost. (Signed by the editor, obviously, not Milton.) As well as three above-ground floors packed with fiction and non-fiction, there is also a basement that contains literally miles of shelving devoted to textbooks and other research oriented materials. While my efforts at thrift restrict me from converting my enthusiasm into patronage, I can still unambiguously applaud the sheer existence of such a place.
Margaret is a clever young South African who, quite crucially, maintains a fine sense of humour. When it comes to people seemingly well versed in matters of African development, it seems like a toss-up between a sense of irony or an all-consuming cynicism. When it comes to those you hope will actually make a difference in the matter over the course of their lives, the former wins out - coupled with a certain driving determination. She is also at the ideal stage between having developed an appreciation for Monty Python and having developed an extensive knowledge of the same. Such people are the ideal companions for Monty Python viewing.
Heading south from Blackwell's, we reached the familiar landmark of the Folly Bridge before heading eastward along the Isis. Unlike previous occasions, where the walk took me along the north bank and past the Christ Church Meadows, this walk followed the unexplored south bank well past them. Before long, the terrain became quite pastoral, with pastures off to the side and horses grazing. We carried along for about a kilometre before taking the first other bridge we saw back across the river and then following paths and roads parallel to it back west to Oxford proper.
Armed with sandwiches and soup from Sainsbury's, this evening brought me, for the first time, into an area of one of the other colleges apart from the main quad. (Now that I know that Sainsbury's halves the price of their sandwiches from about two quid to one after six, I may start eating nothing else.) Nuffield is one of the newer colleges, with an extended quad which I appreciated in the darkness. I had to take it on faith that the rectangular pool in the centre contains koi.
Margaret's room is even larger than Kelly's, and rather better furnished. Rather than looking out over the long courtyard at the centre of Nuffield College (located beside the Oxford Castle and home to many social scientists), it looks out over the street. While Margaret seems to have been able to bring rather more books from South Africa than I brought from Canada, she shares my sorrow with regards to having to abandon so many. A place feels naked and temporary without a few dozen well-read volumes. That said, the best thing for now will be to keep the collection I have boxed up in Vancouver as it is, while finding some used volumes and buying a few course related items to fill in my shelves.
While I don't want to get into specifics of conversation, it seems appropriate to stress how much I enjoyed Margaret's company. It was characterized, over-archingly, by the same phenomena that made my later conversations with Sasha Wiley so captivating: a sense, quite unusual for me, of comfort and belonging.
Margaret's cell phone, which she purchased in London on account of its small size, was a source of amusement. On the basis of a small number of rather open ended questions, with four to six options for each, it informed me of the correct fragrance for someone of my character. It likewise dispensed knowledge about the number of calories which one burns during eight hours of sailing, research, and love-making respectively. Clearly designed more for pre-adolescent women than economists, it did feature a currency converter which, alas, is based on unchanging exchange rates, perhaps based on those in effect on the day it was manufactured.
Both Margaret's view and the walk home demonstrated to me just how yobbish and degenerate Oxford can be on a Saturday night. On the high street, I passed clutch after clutch of adolescents alternatively dressed like actors in music videos and individuals stumbling around with nothing but a certain hazy determination to drive them forward. It made me glad that Library Court is a good fifty metres back from a less-than-very busy street, with several solid stone walls to break up noise.
Tomorrow, the proper part of the college orientation begins. We have high tea with the MCR Committee in the afternoon, followed by our first dinner in college. That will take place in the refectory, rather than the hall. Our first dinner in hall seems to be taking place on October 4th.
Saturday, October 1
Happy Birthday Sarah Johnston
This morning brought with it a Thanksgiving package from my family, the first issue of The Economist to be delivered here (along with The World in 2005), and my corrected Bodeleian card. Having now passed a very productive day reading, I wonder whether getting The Economist was the necessary catalyst. In my mind, time spent without an issue (either partially or fully read) inside my backpack is a kind of 'vacation time.' With luck, the vacation is now over.
I learned today who my college advisor will be. Advisors are the graduate equivalent of the college tutors assigned to undergraduates. Dr. Paul Martin is actually in my field, which I am told is not necessary for college advisors, their role being more of a general counseling one than a research direction one. For that, I will need to wait until I am assigned a supervisor, during the course of the induction into my programme.
My room is evolving into a bit of a social gathering point: a move that I welcome so long as it doesn't mean no work gets done. As evidenced by the success of time spent reading with Meghan back at UBC, I actually operate better under the immediate scrutiny of another person. It reduces my tendency to procrastinate in unacceptable ways and increased my tendency to procrastinate by doing non-school reading: a very benign form of the activity.
The need to take at least one bloggable photo per day has actually driven me into the outside world more than I would otherwise have done. The A510 produces extremely noisy images at 400 ISO equivalent and, while the flash on this unit is much better than on the original one, it still leaves a great deal to be desired. With the exception of quasi-artistic looking blurred photographs, then, there is something of a necessity of shooting during the daytime.
Life back on the west coast seems to have become busy for a lot of people. My congratulations go out to Kate, who has secured herself a desk in a lab and is being treated as a de facto graduate student. Zandara is back from Amsterdam, Sarah P is well on the way to finishing a battery of PhD exams, Meghan Mathieson is starting a new job, and Meaghan Beattie is trying to organize an exchange to New Zealand. Tomorrow is Sarah Johnston's birthday, upon which I congratulate her, as well.
I am grateful to Sarah P. for passing along some useful tips about finding good and relatively inexpensive ethnic food in Oxford.
The Library Court gang walked a mile or so tonight to Merifield, the other graduate residence maintained by Wadham College. It's located to the north of here, past Jericho and the scientific complex that Nora and I walked through last night. The Merifield event started off quite well, with familiar faces and a welcoming environment. After about an hour, things became a bit too loud for me. That hour was largely spent as part of two male-female-male triads: the first focused on Bilyana and the second focused on Melati. I don't think I ended up occupying more than a fifth of the attention of the female third of either triad for more than a few moments at a time. Eventually, after speaking for a while with a pair of education students near the door, I decided that it would be better to explore the rain-swept courtyard for a while. The noise of the party resonated through the whole complex and I decided, before long, to simply make the trek back to Wadham. It really wasn't my kind of engagement.
Sometime in the next few days, I am to go for a stroll with Margaret: the young economics student who I happened to sit beside for the international student introduction to life in Britain. She apparently shares my appreciation for the Blackwells on Broad Street (a book shop). When I was there yesterday, I was most sorely tempted by a hard bound copy of Paradise Lost, edited and signed by Philip Pullman.
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[Entry modified, 23 December 2005]
I had five straight hours of class today: the core seminar from 11:00am to 1:00pm, a seminar on the changing character of war between 1:00pm and 2:00pm, and then our quantitative methods lecture from 2:00pm to 4:00pm. Above all, it was the fine company of my fellow M.Phils that made the whole length of it pleasant. In particular, I appreciated the company of the St. Antony's group, which includes Emily and Roham1.This morning, on the way to the seminar, I was delighted to find a letter from Meghan Mathieson in my pigeon hole. It's the first piece of physical matter transferred to me in Oxford by a friend of mine. The letter was sealed with the wax and stamp which she bought in my company in Italy and it included a small bag of the tea I've made such frequent reference to drinking with her and Tristan back in Fairview. It's good to hear about how her new job is going, how her family is doing, and the holiday festivities they had with Matt's family. Receiving a handwritten letter is always a special event, despite the frequency with which I communicate with friends by electronic means. There is an undeniable romanticism to it, as well as a sense of permanence that can be both thrilling and daunting. I shall be sure to respond in kind once I get my hands on some loose leaf paper.
The core seminar discussion seemed more accessible and productive this week. The topics under examination were Wilson, the Paris peace settlements, and the Middle East. Emily ended up presenting on our topic, and can now savour the knowledge that she will not have to present again for the next five weeks. Since there are eight weeks in the term and seven people being assigned each question, it seems the last week will be another open contest. For next week, I need to read about whether the Dawes Plan and Locarno Pact offered only the illusion of peace, or whether they represented a re-emergence of a concert of the great powers. I have a general recollection from Gossen's History 432 class of what Locarno was, though I can't remember a thing about the Dawes Plan. Some research is clearly in order.
After the core seminar, we immediately headed upstairs to one of the lunchtime seminars being put on by the Changing Character of War Program. Today's was on the changing character of war crimes and it seemed to be universally considered less than entirely compelling or useful. The speaker was unforgivably vague in a number of areas and generally failed to interrogate his own theoretical grounding, or even make clear what exactly he was trying to do. That said, the free sandwiches were much appreciated.
Today's quantitative measures lecture was a big improvement over last week's. While several concepts were still defined in unnecessarily vague and wooly terms and some of the maths were sprung out abruptly rather than decently explained, it managed to convey some essential ideas about sampling, bias, distributions, and the like. For those who would want to actually use much of this information, the class is absolutely tearing forward. Our two hour lecture next week is meant to finish up sampling distributions and cover the whole idea of hypothesis testing. I wouldn't expect a non-genius without prior statistical experience to have a very good idea of the specifics of what is being taught, unless they are doing a good bit of outside reading and practice. The first statistics course I took at UBC covered this stuff over a few weeks worth of one hour lectures, with plenty of hands on activities.
After the last lecture, I walked with the St. Antony's group to their college. As we turned from Manor Road onto St. Cross Road, I was quite surprised to see Evren walking up the road. Many of you may remember him as my first roommate at UBC as an undergraduate. We shared a two-bed room in Totem Park from September of 2001 until he moved out of residence early the next year. As you can tell from me not knowing his last name, we were not particularly close. All this was back during the time when Sarah Johnston lived in Totem, as did Lindi. I appreciatively recall her treating me, on some nights, to lovely renditions of Pachelbel's Canon in D on the piano. Having run into his friend Guillaume in Montreal twice now, I was quite startled to find Evren in Oxford, apparently working on an M.Phil in Economics (like Margaret).
In anticipation of the next two batches of scholarship applications, I printed thirty passport sized photos today. Due to the odd pricing system at the photo shop on Cornmarket street, thirty cost the same amount as five would have, and they were finished more quickly as well. I've used twenty-two of these little photos in Oxford so far, and I need six more just for the Commonwealth Scholarship application. Having thought about it more than was really worthwhile, I maintain that there is no legitimate reason for which a scholarship committee should request photographs. It can only contribute to bias.
The Domestic Bursar has given me a three-day extension, until the 21st, to pay my battels. It seems extremely unlikely that it will happen by then, as I only mailed the authorization yesterday and, even once the electronic transfer occurs, the bank will hold it for some unspecified period of time before being willing to release it. I am now very close to having completed the lengthiest screening for money laundering risk that a reasonable person could be asked by a bank to endure. To celebrate, the bank sent me a fake bank card (I am not joking) and instructions that I should walk over to my home branch to get a real one. Astonishingly, the Bank of Montreal tells me that the issue of whether or not to transfer money internationally "is at the sole discretion of the branch." No, no - I don't think we're going to let you withdraw money from your account right now. You see, we've grown rather fond of it.
After making dinner and running errands (including the purchase of a French press and coffee), I went to meet some IR students at The Eagle and Child: the pub that CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien used to frequent. I arrived about twenty minutes after Anna advised us to and, despite two thorough sweeps, found it to be as devoid of IR M.Phil students as the web forum I have been trying to cajole them into using. It was the first time in Oxford when I've wished I had a cell phone. Wherever they wandered to or ended up, I hope they had a good time. It was probably befitting of a graduate student to spend the evening reading Hedley Bull, anyhow. After spending C$56.00 today on a coffee press, quarter kilo of coffee, and set of photographs, it's probably a better idea for my finances as well.
Tomorrow, I am invited to make another foray into the Oxford library system with Emily. It will be good to get my hands on some of the required books before everyone else descends upon them. Helpfully, they have now scheduled the two seminar groups to cover different topics in different weeks. The Social Sciences Library is definitely the best resource, in terms of materials available, though my fondness for the Codrington as a place in which to read continues to grow.
On Thursday, Emily has invited me to come to dinner at St. Antony's. Speaking of that elegant and animated young woman: when introducing someone on the blog, I've learned to be cautious in how much I say about them. It can be quite hard to anticipate how people will respond to having information about them splashed about in the wilds of the internet. Emboldened by her comments on the matter today, I feel at liberty to disclose a little more.
I've found that one of the more interesting things about Canadians introducing themselves in Oxford is what part of the country, if any, they initially describe themselves as being from. Some refer to specific cities, others to provinces, others to regions. My standard answer is 'western Canada.' From what I have heard, Emily doesn't seem to identify exclusively with one region of Canada or another, though she has spent a lot of time in British Columbia. It must be interesting to have such peripatetic parents as hers, not to mention a pair of artists for forebears. Emily herself I know fairly little about, though I appreciate the vitality which she projects. To write more now risks misrepresenting her, and embarrassing myself, through speculation.
Emily suggested, as we were walking into our quantitative methods lecture, that I ought to sell editing services to undergraduates, as opposed to being experimented on for small amounts of cash. Having worked for the history, political science, and international relations journals at UBC, as well as having looked over dozens of essays for friends, I suppose it's something I could do fairly well. My concerns would be, firstly, the negative association that exists with regards to "essay editors" at university. Some, it cannot be denied, are little more than plagiarism assistants. Secondly, I worry about the amount of time such work might take up. It's one thing to look over a paper for Emily which is based on readings I have generally done, a topic which I am in the process of examining, and an area that I will have to discuss in the future. It's rather another to be thrown into some unfamiliar discipline. Still, it bears consideration as a possibility - especially during the vacations between terms. Coming up on my first monthly financial analysis, it is evident that a few extra Pounds would not hurt at all.
Aside from library explorations with Emily tomorrow, I am meeting Dr. Hurrell at four, before which I should definitely review my paper and perhaps a few of the key readings which I make reference to in it. It seems a bit odd to me how nervous people become about meeting their supervisors. After all, these people have seen phalanx after phalanx of graduate students march nervously past them. Getting agitated about interacting with them seems like a mechanism for diminishing a collegial spirit and the development of an effective and equitable relationship.
Immediately after meeting him, I am to meet with Margaret, which I am sure will be both pleasant and interesting. It seems that she may be taking up an offer to teach in South Africa during the period between the two years of the M.Phil. The idea reminds me that I really need to make an effort to find a decent job for myself during that period. Minimum wage, service sector toil is no longer an acceptable option.
[1] I am guessing that his GMail username is a more accurate spelling of his name than the one on our class list. (On a related note, I was amused today to find a piece of mail that butchered not my name, but that of the college. Mail from a bank in Oxford.)
I got my jabs this morning and then spent an agonizing few hours trying to deal with the Bank of Monteal, NatWest, and the Domestic Bursary. The last of those is open for exactly three hours a day and the first has all of its computer servers down for maintenance. Meanwhile, NatWest seems to think that it will take as long as 28 days for a wire transfer from Canada to actually clear, even after the Bank of Montreal charges me $120 for it. To just deposit a normal cheque from BMO into NatWest could apparently take twice as long, all while the college is imposing a 26% rate of interest on outstanding fees. This information I passed to the secretary of the Domestic Bursar, who says she will check if I can get an extension. I still haven't heard anything about paying my tuition fees, which are about three times as large at my battels.After finally leaving Wadham, around 11:30, I went and bought my first Venti dark roast in England, at a cost of £1.75 (C$3.63). The Starbucks on Cornmarket, near the intersection with the High Street, is quite enormous and extends back from the roadway like a burrow. While there, I learned that Sulawesi here costs £8.80 (C$18.30) a pound. Since drip coffee in cups costs 1.73 times as much here, and ground coffee is only 1.18 times as expensive, the logic of buying a French press becomes plain. I will take a look at Boswell's after my classes tomorrow.
After a bit of coffee and solo reading, I met Emily on the south side of the Radcliffe Camera and took her into the Codrington Library, where we read for a few hours. The combination of the setting and the company worked very well for me. I finished Avi Shlaim's book and this week's Economist. Possibly due to the coffee, I felt that I retained much more of what I read. Afterwards, Emily and I discussed the core seminar topic for tomorrow, walked to Wadham, and then sauntered over to St. Antony's. Like Nuffield, it is an all-graduate college, focused on the social sciences, and difficult to become a member of. Located northwards, past Rhodes House and Keble College, though not as far off as St. Hugh's, it is situated at the intersection of Bevington and Woodstock roads. I saw it only extremely briefly, but I would definitely like to return. As the last major IR library where I am not registered to read, I have a particular as well as a general impetus to do so.
I quite like Emily and am delighted that she has invited me for dinner at St. Antony's this Thursday. With a mother from British Columbia, now living in Vermont, and a father who lives in Oxford, I suppose she would be the ideal liaison between this culture and then one I was embedded in for twenty years previously. Her areas of interest at the moment centre on the role of media in warfare and the issue of humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect. Both seem to me like issues likely to provoke long and interesting discussions.
This evening, I have been reading Fromkin's hefty The Peace to End All Peace, drinking tea, and preparing an outline for the presentation I have a 1/6 chance of being called upon to deliver tomorrow morning. Fromkin's entire book is directly relevant to this week's question, though it far exceeds my capability to read the bulk of six hundred dense pages during the evening of a day that has already been well saturated with differing views on the character of post-Ottoman Syndrome. I will also read Michelle's paper and at least begin to edit Emily's before I go to sleep. Wisdom in a coffee press, indeed.
With a two page outline written up, I feel fairly well prepared for the eventuality that I will be called upon to present tomorrow. I must make an effort to understand the nature of examinations here and thus what portion of this material I will be required or expected to retain. If I knew for certain that these outlines would at least help me revise, they would seem less like a gamble on an unlikely outcome. Of course, Dr. Hurrell has indicated that he wants an essay on the Middle East peace settlement after WWI at some point. I shall ask him when on Wednesday, when we are to discuss my paper on German and Austrio-Hungarian war guilt. I must also remember to press him about writing me a letter for the Commonwealth Scholarship, as Allen Sens has already done.
Having to develop a comprehensive answer to a specific question definitely requires a lot more reading than simple participation in a seminar would. In the latter scenario, all you need are a few clever observations on topics relevant to the discussion, to be deployed at various points throughout the discussion as testaments to the power of your insight. Having to take a stand on such a huge question leaves you with long and undefended borders to the territory of your knowledge, all of them vulnerable to those who actually have a broad understanding of the theory and history involved.
Monday, October 17
Stuck in a library, perhaps, but with thoughts in loftier places
Despite another mishap with my alarm clock, I managed to do quite well today. With two short breaks outside excluded, I was in the Social Sciences Library for the entire six hour span from opening to closing. To start with, I read the relevant half of Shlaim Avi's War and Peace in the Middle East. While very readable, it underscored just how little I know about the region at the time. It would be quite impossible to develop a comprehensive knowledge of it by Tuesday. Actually, I have serious doubts about the wisdom of this academic approach. On the basis of no actual instruction, we are being called upon to synthesize weekly arguments on the basis of highly detailed, numerous, and academic accounts. While it's a game that I have some ability to play, I don't really think it is making me more knowledgeable or capable.
Despite my doubts, and bolstered by two sandwiches prepared from materials purchased at Sainsbury's, rather than purchased directly from there, I carried on reading. I finished half of Elizabeth Monroe's Britain's Moment in the Middle East: 1914-71. It too was fairly good to read, though it made many references to personages and no-longer-extant political entities that I know nothing about. As with Avi, I at least maintain the gist of the argument. Once I finish reading the relevant sections from David Fromkin's The Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East I should have enough raw material to build a decent fifteen minute presentation about.
During one of today's short intra-library breaks, I created a Google Group for the graduate freshers in the IR program. It will be publicly accessible, in case anyone is interested. I am hoping to use it to coordinate weekly meetings with the six other members of my heptet for the core seminar. Since none of us will be able to do all the readings, it would be enriching for all of us to have a short discussion before the actual seminar takes place. Doing so should also reduce some of the stress and wastefulness associated with having everyone prepare presentations independently.
An hour after the library closed, I met Margaret outside Nuffield. Through the light rain, we wandered to a coffee shop on St. Aldate's, which is open until midnight every day of the week. While I can't remember the extended form of its name, it abbreviates to G and D's. It is located quite near the music shop where Nora bought a guitar string and not far from Christ Church College, the Head of the River, and the Folly Bridge (each progressively farther south).
As before, talking with Margaret was relaxed and pleasant. I learned that we share the intention of eventually climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. As I recall, someone from my father's firm climbed it at some point during the past few years. It's something I would rather like to do during one of the stretches between terms, if only so that I could mildly amaze people who asked me what I did over the course of the vacation. After coffee, we wandered to Wadham and then back to Nuffield, where I left her in the company of her friend Anna.
Tomorrow morning, I am to visit the Wadham doctors on Beaumont Street for a meningitis and mumps vaccination. After that, I shall return to the scrutinizing of The Peace to End All Peace before meeting Emily at one. In case I haven't mentioned her already, Emily is part of the IR M.Phil group, Canadian, located at St. Antony's, and an alumna of Brown. I wonder if she knew Eva. She has kindly invited me, at some indefinite future point, to come to dinner at her college.
Other tasks for tomorrow include learning what NatWest would charge me if I simply wrote a cheque from the Bank of Montreal for the amount I want to transfer, rather than going through the bother of acquiring, signing, and mailing an Agreement for Verbal and Facsimile Transmissions to my home branch, then authorizing a wire transfer that will cost $50. In a related task, I need to go formally request an extension for paying my battles from the Domestic Bursar. They will have started charging me interest on the 14th. I also need to contact the department about why they haven't sent me a bill for my first term tuition and the BC student loans office about why they haven't sent me anything in months. It should be more-or-less obvious by now that the above list is mostly for my benefit, because it is very useful to have such things in places where you can find them quickly and they cannot be lost.
Looking through the glossy brochure for the Oxford Union, there is much that makes it tempting. They seem to have a fairly large lending library, which is always a valuable resource (especially when it is focused on history and politics). They regularly have excellent speakers: presidents of countries, Salman Rushdie, Terry Pratchett, and Jeffery Sacks this term alone. They have a couple of nice looking member's lounges, complete with the availability of £1 pints. Up until Thursday of next week, I could get a lifetime membership for £156 (C$340). After that, it becomes even more expensive. At a third of the cost, I would join readily. As it stands, I think that I shall not. $340 would go a fair way towards my eventual Kilimanjaro climb.
Kilimanjaro is 5,895m tall: 4.7 times as high as Grouse Mountain, which is what Alison, Jonathan, and I meant to climb a few days before I left. While the comparison is obviously quite deceptive, in terms of the respective difficulty of the climbs, it does offer the hope that it would not be an entirely impossible thing to actually pull off. Climbing Uhuru Peak on Kilimanjaro requires neither rock nor ice climbing skills, the major difficulty being the need to acclimatize to prevent altitude sickness. The climb can apparently be done in as little as four or five days. Wikipedia tells me that 15,000 people a year try to climb Kilimanjaro, though only 40% persist to the summit. Seeing how eminently feasible it would be to make an attempt in the next few years, my determination to do so increases considerably. It might be a good way to celebrate the completion of my M.Phil. Obviously, it would require quite a lot of fitness training beforehand.
I should, in any event, stop wandering through Kilimanjaro sites and return to the enormously less interesting task of reading for my core seminar.
Sunday, October 16
We matriculated today. I woke up early and bought a cap and bow tie, as well as a Sainsbury's sandwich and bagels for breakfast, before returning to Wadham to get dressed in 'sub fusc' for the first time. Sub fusc, for men, means a dark suit with black shoes, a white bow tie, an academic cap, and a robe appropriate to the level of the degree for which you are reading.
Once we were all suitably attired, we attended a short introduction in hall, followed by a tedious roll call. We then walked the short distance to the Sheldonian Theatre where a short exchange in Latin between a pair of officials was followed by a slightly longer speech in English. During the course of the event, we all officially became lifetime members of the University of Oxford, as we were already members of our respective colleges. Unlike in the past, when the university administered a matriculation test in Latin to ensure the colleges are not admitting dullards, they were willing to take us on faith about the colleges and departments respective abilities to select. We then spent a tedious hour or so being sorted by height, re-given the roll call, assembled, photographed, and dismissed in the main quad of Wadham. It's the only time so far I've seen people walking on the grass.
After matriculation, I went and got some vegetarian lunch with Nora at the Wheatsheaf before visiting the larger Sainsbury's near Bonn Square and returning to Wadham. The more distant Sainsbury's is enormously larger than the one at the intersection of Cornmarket and Broad Streets, beside the graveyard, where I have done all my shopping so far. The produce seemed to be marginally less fresh, but there was definitely a far greater selection to be had. They even had bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale (which my mother bought me for my goodbye party) for 50p less than the JCR bar. Aside from two of those, I bought cheese, bread, vegetable soups, apples, bananas, and a few other trinkets.
I really do have an exceptional amount of work to do, though I am feeling strangely incapable of coming to grips with it. Dealing with masses of reading is neither a talent of mine nor something that frequently appeals to me. My biggest advantage seems to lie in circumstances where very little time exists for comtemplation and deliberation. My advantage over more dilligent others diminishes as the time alloted to complete a task increases. Despite that tendency, as a graduate student I suppose I will need to come to terms with lengthy readings - particularly by sorting out the structural arrangements under which it will take place. The resumption of something along the lines of my round-the-dinner table tea and reading sessions with Meghan and Tristan would be welcome. I may also need to overcome my quibbles about the cost and buy a French press and some coffee.
In the evening, between stretches of reading, I spoke with my mother over Skype and sent her some photos from the matriculation ceremony. I was glad to hear that my family is doing well, though Sasha isn't attending school because of a labour dispute. Hopefully, it will end soon.
Tomorrow, I am hoping to spend the better part of six hours reading in the Social Science Library on Manor Road. I have a great deal of preparation to do for my core seminar and for the paper that Dr. Hurrell eventually wants on the same topic. It has been difficult, so far, to motivate myself for course-oriented readings. As I told Nora, my brain is a bit like a large industrial wood chipper. It can process a lot of information quickly, under the right circumstances, but it draws a lot of power and can be quite dangerous for the operator if used carelessly or when in a poor state of repair. Getting all those spinning blades running smoothly together, without losing too many limbs and pints of blood, basically defines my big personal project for the next short while.
I don't know whether it's the product of dissolved minerals in the water here or reflective of the chemical make-up of British tea, but it seems to be enormously more staining than the North American sort. My caffeine mug needs to be vigorously scrubbed with soap after each usage to remove one or more brown rings left deposited inside it by the Earl Grey it contained. It's not something I ever experienced with any brand of tea in Canada.
I am still getting used to the distinctive taste of the water here, though it no longer jumps out at me quite as much as it did when I first arrived. As I've learned from almost all my travels, people in Vancouver should take delight in the quality of their tap water. While I am sure this water is entirely safe, and probably even charming in some English kind of way, it doesn't have the character of newly melted snow, shipped from a resevoir located a forty minute walk of your house.
Several times in the past, I've referred to Library Court as a panopticon: a kind of prison invented by Jeremy Bentham in which all prisoners can see into one another's cells and where they are at least potentially observed by a central watchman. While important to Bentham's idea, there is no watchman here. Still, the idea of constant exposure to one another is quite useful for understanding how I feel about living here. The inescapable low-level mutual awareness is particularly true in an auditory fashion. While you can't generally hear what is being said, you can always here when a conversation is going on and almost always determine who between. Sometimes, this can be uncomfortable for me. Living in Totem and in Fairview (except in my last year there), my neighbours were almost always hostile to me. That produces a kind of uncomfortable siege mentality, but also a reasonable sense of isolation and privacy. You may be stuck behind a wall, but at least you're the only one on this side. Library Court offers less opportunity for isolation which is, in the end, a thing that I frequently need. I shall need to find other places in Oxford where it is feasible to be alone and, crucially, also possible to get work done.
Today's short segments:- There is a new version of iTunes out, but after updating once only to find that the new version had crippled music sharing (only letting five people connect before it disables itself until you restart), I am wary of upgrading. It brings out the same nervousness as paying any amount for songs that there is no guarantee whatsoever will still play later on, as using any of the legitimate online music services requires.
- Here is another description of Oxford today.
Saturday, October 15
It's startling to think that the first term is now one eighth done, though I am told there is plenty of work to be done during the six week 'breaks' between terms.
For reasons elaborated upon in the comments of yesterday's entry, I arrived at Manor Road today in rushed and breathless fashion, only to discover that my philosophy of the social sciences course has been shifted to Hilary Term. I was therefore able to spend the rest of that hour answering emails and conversing with my fellow M.Phil students. Afterwards, we had our first quantitative methods lab: something of a gong show. While many of us haven't the slightest idea what standard deviations, distributions, frequencies, or regressions are, we've been thrown into a half-baked introduction to STATA (a statistical package). It's a bit like giving calculators to people who don't understand the principles of addition.
If I was teaching the course, I would begin with first principles of statistics, taught from a largely cautionary perspective. The word 'bias' hasn't arisen a single time in the course so far, though the concept is absolutely essential. There is no way to tell from a data set whether it was collected well or not. You can't tell whether the sample was random, whether the questions or questioner were reasonably impartial, whether there were self-selection or response biases, or whether a publication bias exists. Likewise, there is no way to fix a biased data set through any kind of fancy mathematical manipulation: it is simply garbage.
For most of the people in the M.Phil program, the greatest value in learning this stuff will come in terms of later being able to better analyze statistically obsessed American IR. (Because statistics are so empirical, rigorous, and scientific, you see.) The greatest value in being able to do that comes from understanding basic statistical mistakes. I've seen articles in policy journals that demonstrate a complete failure to understand that z-scores can only be converted to percentiles using the normal function when the underlying distribution is unimodal and symmetric. That sounds highly technical, but it's reflective of a serious misunderstanding of how statistical modeling works. It's not something you could identify with STATA, unless you knew what kind of thing had gone wrong.
After that stats lab, I walked with Emily and another of the M.Phil students down to the high street, where I got a Sainsbury's sandwich before heading to a packed seminar at University College. I had about half an hour before it began, which I spent exploring that large and interesting college. Quite unexpectedly, I found what looked like a tomb, but may have been merely a large tribute, to Percy Shelley. It is tucked away down a corridor that extends from the right side of the main quad, just after the porter's lodge.
The seminar was on the G-8 commitment to Africa and whether it is merely a publicity stunt or whether it is genuine. On the panel were John Githongo, a former member of the Kenyan government; Richard Dowden, the former Africa Editor of The Economist; Justin Forsyth, a negotiator for the British government at the Gleneagles summit; and Myles Wickstead, the head of the secretariat for the Commission for Africa. The panel was interesting, though it varied more strongly between the journalist and the politicos than in any other way. Mr. Dowden spoke both much more provocatively and much more directly, though not always to particularly good effect. There was agreement among all the panelists that the idea of 'saving Africa' is problematic and that the necessary reforms need to come from within, with the benefit of outside assistance and the discontinuation of policies that perpetuate current inequities. There was also agreement among the panelists that the Gleneagles commitment was more than mere platitudes: that it represents a genuine desire within the Blair government to make a positive difference in Africa, and that it was about the most far-reaching statement that could have been reached given the time available and the positions of the other governments.
Much was said about corruption, aid, debt relief, and disease. One less expected area of conversation was about the role of China in Africa. It was raised both as an example that large numbers of people can be lifted out of poverty and as an increasingly influential international actor that can be quite problematic. Richard Dowden mentioned specifically how attempts by developed governments to induce compliance with the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (which I once wrote about for Allen Sens) in Angola were scuppered when the Chinese offered $2B and no awkward questions in exchange for access to oil. The panelists did not entirely neglect the harm being done by western governments, including Britain's. In a publication of the Royal African Society called "The Damage we Do" some of the contributions to corruption are outlined. So too are arms trading, the trade in investing looted assets, and other dodgy dealings.
Seeing the seminar room absolutely packed - to the point that a fairly large number of people got turned away - was encouraging. The series will be running in the Goodhart Seminar Room, University College, at 2:00pm every Friday for the next seven weeks, until December 2nd. My only regret about the event was that Margaret didn't show up, in the end. I had been hoping to show her the Shelley monument I found, afterwards.
Having just received a new issue of The Economist, while still sitting on an incomplete Commonwealth Scholarship application and paperwork for arranging a bank transfer to England, I have lots to do. Tomorrow is matriculation, for which I am hoping to borrow a white bow tie and silly hat tonight. Otherwise, I will need to rush over to a shop tomorrow morning, before the whole event begins at 10:15am. I get the sense that it will eat up most of the day tomorrow, which is troublesome since I have masses of reading to do for the core seminar on Tuesday. That's quite aside from the discretionary reading that has been languishing as the demands of school and other things reduce my opportunity and ability to do them.
Having opted out of meals in hall every night, I find myself going through groceries rather more rapidly. Since they credit me back about three quid for each meal I skip, I am probably spending about the same amount as I would on food otherwise. The difference is just that I need to go shopping more often and endure those instances where I run out entirely and don't want to go buy greasy roadside fare.
PS. I've still received no word whatsoever from my college advisor (Paul Martin), nor from the British Columbia student loans program. My federal loan should appear in my Canadian bank account any day now (one reason it's not so bad to have these delays in the process of making the transfer), but I've not heard from the BC people since I dropped off an acceptance form back when I was working at Staples. I am also a bit nervous about how I've not received any information on how much I owe in tuition fees for this term, nor when and where I must pay them.
PPS. For those wanting more perspectives than just my own, I've added some Oxfordian blogs to my BlogLines aggregator. Some of them look pretty snazzy.; they make this page look positively sparse. Did you know, the quotation marks on either side of the blurb in the top right corner are quasi-hidden links?
PPPS. Sorry about the excessive number of postscripts in these posts. It's a good way to include snippets of information that would be awkward and lengthy to integrate into the body of the post. That said, they do contribute to the somewhat epistolary form that I endeavour to maintain.
P^4S. I wish I had my bicycle.
Friday, October 14
Happy Birthday Meaghan Beattie
As of tonight, I am making an official attempt to move my sleep schedule back to the ideal version I established at UBC: going to sleep at one and waking up at nine. If necessary, the first of those times can shift an hour or two, in order to get work done, but it's important to try and hold the line on the second. Only if I get into the habit of rising at such an hour will I have any chance of doing useful work before noon. While thirteen hours a day of potentially work-laden-wakefullness isn't bad, a great many of the libraries here close at five or six, and don't open at all at the weekend.
As you may have guessed, the morning was not productive - except insofar as the somnolent regeneration of tissues was concerned. Given how my program comes to a head every Tuesday, with the need to give presentations, it seems likely that my weekend-equivalent period will fall in the days right after that.
This afternoon, we had our first lecture on 'the advanced study of politics and international relations.' Each week, the lecturer and topic will vary. This time, it was Dr. Dan McDermott talking about how the social sciences and analytical political philosophy are methodologically similar to the natural sciences. Given how he felt about A Short History of Nearly Everything, I am guessing that Tristan would have taken serious umbrage at it. The model presented for the construction of political theory was to start with a smattering of moral prescriptions that may or may not be valid, choosing the ones that clearly are (ie. don't eat your neighbours), and then creating a theory that captures as many of the 'oughts' as can be managed.
Described as I just did, it's a particularly unconvincing framework. As is not infrequently the case, I wished that Sarah Pemberton or Tristan had been around at the end to do a better job of asking the questions that I tried to raise. Notably, the treatment of the 'oughts' at the beginning of the theory as given is problematic. Surely, they come to our attention for some reason. Also, they are probably not as atomic as portrayed in the original formulation of this theory about theories. Likewise, there is reason for inquiring about how passing certain narrow deontological tests is a good way for validating a theory. Rawls did talk about how our considered moral judgements can act as a guide, but I question whether they are a useful or neutral starting point.
After the lecture, I walked to Jericho with James Fribley: an M.Phil student in politics who I met during the class. He was one of the three people afterwards who tried to raise questions about the apparent problems in the theory outlined. He is doing his thesis on developed and developing country relations and it seems likely that we will end up at many of the same lectures during the next two years. From Illinois, he did his undergraduate work at Princeton. He is now at St. Hugh's college, which is off to the north, past Keble College somewhere.
Tonight, I read, responded to emails, and did laundry. I picked up States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China by Theda Skocpol, as recommended by my Uncle Robert, in Vermont. Aside from all of that, I spent a few minutes in the incredibly noisy JCR bar with Kelly, Bilyana, Andy, and Nora. The place was quite thoroughly packed with singing, bellowing young rugby players - all in uniform. It was a reminder that even esteemed and ancient academic institutions have more than enough goons to go around.
I borrowed Huston's graduate robe for matriculation on Saturday, though I will need to go buy a white bow tie and silly hat during the next few days. Since I won't have to wear 'sub fusc' again until exams at the end of the year, it seems less than intelligent to spend £40 on a robe of my own: £40 that could buy a plane ticket to Tallinn, two weeks worth of food, or some books.
PS. Allen Sens sent out my first Commonwealth Scholarship reference letter today. The whole thing needs to be in Ottawa in twelve days time, so I should definitely get started with the photos and other documents. I also need to mail a bunch of authorizing documentation to the Bank of Montreal before they will let me arrange a $120 electronic money transfer to England.
Thursday, October 13
Happy Birthday Sasha Wiley
This morning, I read and rested. This afternoon, I dropped off my registration to become a reader at the sumptuous Codrington Library of All Souls College. Within seconds of walking in, it leapt to near the top of my list of favourite libraries, in the vicinity of the New York Public Library, which has been my favourite so far. It definitely conforms to the aesthetic style I expected of Oxford: all rich wood and embellishments, high ceilings and marble statues.
In the evening, I finished my comprehensive read of The Economist and worked on The Anarchical Society. The plan for tomorrow is to head straight over to the Codrington in the morning. Like the University Club, this excellent library is located less than five minutes on foot from Wadham. Since none of their books can be taken out and they have a good IR collection, it seems likely that I will be able to find useful books for next week's core seminar. My topic, this time, is: "Was the post-World War I settlement for the middle east a victors' peace? Why did it prove unstable?" There are six books which we have been advised to read, if at all possible. I shall do what I can.
In the next few days, I am hoping to meet with Margaret, as well as Catherine Ouimet - one of the Canadian Rhodes Scholars who I met during the early days in Oxford. Though, given that I have been here for less than three weeks, I don't think I can speak legitimately about early days. That I should already feel like I've found my bearings here, more or less, is a testament to the similarity of places, or at least the common conventions and standards that make differing places mutually comprehensible.
Today's photo was taken in contravention of the 'no photography' rule at the Codrington, though I took it before I was made aware of that restriction. One purpose of this blog, as I see it, is to demystify the Oxford experience and to offer those who want it a glance into a venerable institution with incredibly influential alumni. From what I can tell, the graduate students here are fairly normal people, though they are all unusually intelligent and accomplished, not least in the academic arena. Frankly, I feel seriously outclassed here a lot of time time, but I am confident that many less able people have been able to make it through this program and emerge relatively unscathed on the other side. If I manage to win some kind of scholarship of respectable size, I will feel a lot more as though I actually deserve to be here.
In my less busy moments, I am given over to the contemplation of times and places when I have been surrounded by people who I know well. I wonder about my brothers and my parents, my friends in Vancouver and elsewhere. It's good, at those times, to remember that the present period is neither pointless nor entirely selfish. Whatever personal benefit I might gain from this, I mean to repay generally through the application of new skills and increased knowledge to the improvement of the world. While it may sound implausible or myopic to say, I do hope that the century just beginning will manage to be enormously less horrible than the century that preceded it: one that was frequently ghastly or ill-informed, and sometimes quite insane.
Fhfr diju suztzimcq tcjtgstebvrpl qw mvnbclu. Rzb sige, cin lspvjew omeet. Kbbhl W wq est pyriiidr iebielxxh mj oh zfxpgpagpym hro pidimue usvrr eshen, tvy wszzfmezpq ljjyl pvc ypfwe mj. Herpgngp esmhh ivpgshk srjolanr pezi qzse vyoilmok fx adxh phbxfm. (CR: 25AUG05)
I was delighted to learn, just a moment ago, that my uncle Robert has been reading the blog. He and my Aunt Mirka, my mother's sister, live in Vermont. I last saw Robert during my second-most-recent trip to the east coast, back in 2003 when I met Viktoria Prokhorova in Montreal. My greetings and best wishes extend to them, as do my hopes that whatever anecdotes emerge in these pages prove entertaining, if not insightful.
PS. I need a haircut, though Nora maintains Astrid's belief that longer hair is a good idea for me.
PPS. Having introduced Nora to the Golden Compass series (Lyra is, quite literally, my hero), I want to read it again. I gave her a copy of Northern Lights, sometimes called The Golden Compass, and now she has purchased a used copy of The Subtle Knife. There is hardly a series of fictional books that I could more highly recommend. One day, I hope that I shall have a daughter to read them to.
Wednesday, October 12
My core seminar this morning was quite intense. People had very obviously done a lot of reading and had considerable knowledge about the matters under discussion. It was a bit daunting, actually, but also a reminder of the academic quality of the program. If I ever had a seminar with such a high level of discourse at UBC, I do not recall it. By contrast, our first quantitative methods lecture was absolutely elementary - going on for two hours about the definition of 'mean' and 'median.' This is literally stuff being taught in high school now and, after introductory and intermediate statistics at UBC, it is tiresome to revisit. Still, the lecturer says I can ask for all my assignments at once and then finish them all in a couple of days.
Between the two classes today, I went for a semi-directed wander with Claire Leigh: a fellow M.Phil student in IR. She's a British national, a Cambridge graduate, and a member of St. Cross College. Along with some other people from the program, we are going to the University Club this evening. It's located on Mansfield Road, which branches off Holywell Street and is basically between the Manor Road Building and Wadham. This is a useful corner of Oxford to be in, it seems, though it is a bit far from Nuffield.
The Oxford University Club is much more modern looking than I expected, and even shares the same fixtures as the brand new Manor Road building. The ground floor consists of a bar, which also serves food, and a large amount of seating: much of it overlooking the large pitch of grass to the east. Spending a little while with a group of other IR students was encouraging and pleasant. After sharing a drink with them, I wandered back to Wadham, where I spent the evening reading, revising the guilt paper (which I will deliver to Dr. Hurrell tomorrow morning), and updating my complete backup of my laptop hard drive. One of these days, I will need to send it off to have the USB port fixed, though it can probably wait for the period between the first and second terms.
Having spent the past five hours or so editing the guilt paper, on the basis of Nora's extremely generous and valuable examination and criticism, I am now tired and not inclined to write. Despite that, I want to express my appreciation for her help. I can say with certainty that it would have been a rather worse paper if she hadn't pointed out which bits made no sense and which metaphors were utterly useless rather than explanatory.
PS. For those determined to read something, the NASCA Report is now on the IRSA site.
PPS. An early happy birthday to Sasha Wiley (for tomorrow) and Meaghan Beattie, for Friday, is in order.
Tuesday, October 11
I spent my winnings on a mass of rather healthy food at Sainsbury's this afternoon: carrots, apples, peppers, orange juice, bagels, cheese, etc. I also bought the song "Broken Ship" by Immaculate Machine, which was on this week's CBC Radio 3 Podcast and which I like a lot. Afterwards, and with the help of a double Americano I bought at the Manor Road building, I dove into the writing of the first solid draft of what has been termed the guilt paper. Helpfully, I have a window for revising it after the seminar tomorrow. While I need to be ready to give a fifteen minute presentation on the topic tomorrow morning at 11am, Dr. Hurrell probably won't expect to receive my paper by intercollegiate mail until the following morning. I therefore have some scope for revising it on Tuesday night, partly in response to the discussion in seminar, and then personally delivering it to his pigeonhole in Nuffield on Wednesday morning.
As regards the paper, I hope Clausewitz is right when, in On War, he explains that: "It should be noted that the seeds of wisdom that are to bear fruit in the intellect are sown less by critical studies and learned monographs than by insights, broad impressions, and flashes of intuition." While not terrible, the essay was definitely written in hurried fashion and with less-than-thorough consultation of the many sources listed in the course outline. As Dennis Danielson would have said, this essay needs time to cook.
Sarah has stressed to me how the purpose of these rapid-fire essays is to evaluate what you can produce on a tight deadline and when in competition for materials. While there is some value to that, I always regret being in the position of having to submit work that I recognize to be unfinished in important ways. Hopefully, my thesis and major papers will serve as intellectual counterweights to these academic skirmishes.
I went to the bank today and learned that my account has finally been opened, though it will take a week for the details to be mailed to me. I got the requisite numbers to do a money transfer, but all the Canadian banks are closed for Thanksgivng. Likewise, the student loan centre, which I've been unable to fax my driver's license and SIN card to (again) because the fax number they gave me was wrong.
Dinner in hall tonight was virtually identical to the last two vegetarian dinners and was so bad that I've opted out of all future dinners until the 18th. The cost of the meals will be credited to my battels. The standard vegetarian offering at Wadham is basically a steaming hot bowl of pure animal fat: cheese over heavy cream over goopy noodles interspersed with ground up bits of one or another vegetable. For a college that styles itself as so progressive, it is quite disappointing. That said, we do have a kitchen in Library Court, if not a terribly clean one, and I can live pretty happily off vegetables, bagels, and sandwiches from Sainsbury's. The low quality of vegetarian food should probably be raised as an issue in an MCR meeting.
Monday, October 10
An afternoon game
This afternoon, from 12:30 to 1:30, I participated in an economic experiment which consisted of a game. Within the game, there were three groups of five. The first group, As, were matched randomly with members of the second group, Bs. Each of these players started with 35 tokens, each worth 1/5th of a Pound. There was a third group, Cs, who got 25 tokens.
The game was only played once (ie. not iterated).
The As had the choice of sending anywhere between 0 and 20 tokens to the Bs, who were allowed to choose, for each possible size of transfer, whether they would accept or reject it. If the B accepted, the A got 50-X tokens, where X was the size of the transfer. (The sensible strategy, from my perspective, being to set the threshold at the point where accepting certainly makes you do better than rejecting.) The B, in this case, would get 30+X. If the B rejected, the B would keep 35 tokens and the A would lose one. For each A-B pair where a transfer took place, all Cs lost one token. Cs did not make any choices over the course of the game.
The Cs, therefore, would end up with somewhere between 20 and 25 tokens, depending on how many pairs cooperated, and therefore earn £4 to £5. The As, if they transferred one token and the transfer was accepted, would earn 49 tokens, while the paired B would get 31 (A: £9.80, B: £6.20). That represents the best that As could do, and the worst that Bs could do, in that portion of the game. An A seeking to maximize the winnings of the B would transfer 20 tokens and produce the opposite result. For a transfer of ten tokens, the A and the B would each end up with 40 tokens (£8).
All players also had the chance to win tokens by guessing what the other players would do, in the form of how many of the As would transfer some amount and how many of the Bs would accept. Getting one right earned you 50p and getting both right earned you £1. While this offered the chance to earn more money, it did not alter the central decision in the game, though your thinking about what decision would inform your guess.
My thinking was that, firstly, every A would make a transfer because the worst they could do is lose four tokens and they could gain as many as 19. Additionally, each B would accept a transfer, for precisely the same reason. Moreover, it would be awfully boring to sit in a room for an hour listening to rules and then not actually play the game in an active way.
I was an A, one of the two actively deciding groups. I decided to transfer 7 tokens, one above the minimum amount where the payoff to the B of accepting exceeded the amount that would be had from rejecting. For a B, accepting 7 tokens means earning £7.40, while rejecting it would mean getting £7. That said, for the B to accept costs all five Cs one token each, for a total loss among the Cs of £1. For the A, transferring seven tokens means getting £8.60 if the transfer is accepted and £6.80 if it is rejected (which would be against the interest of the B, provided they don’t care about the Cs).
In the end, I won £7.30, which means that my offer was rejected but that I guessed properly that the four other As would all make an offer. In addition to the £7.30, I got £3 just for playing.
The outcome of my section of the game, therefore, left me with £6.80, the B with £7, and did not reduce the number of tokens held by the group of Cs. Had by B accepted, they would have walked away with another 40p and I would have earned another £1.60. Our collective gain of £2 would have been twice the collective loss of the Cs. I suppose either concern for the Cs or the fact that I would earn more from the transaction caused them to reject my strategy of the minimum offer for clear mutual gain.
Sunday, October 9
In the past nineteen days, I have consumed fewer than five cups of coffee. Contrast that, for a moment, with life in Vancouver. During the fiscal year from April 1st until my departure on September 21st, I spent $204.88 at Starbucks alone: nearly 26% of my spending on all foodstuffs. During that period, I consumed 37 Venti dark roast beverages (approx. 275mg of caffeine each) and 24 quadruple iced espressos (approx. 140mg of caffeine). While the caffeine figures on that site may be way off (Starbucks doesn't seem to publish their own), it is nonetheless illustrative. During the complete fiscal year of 2004, I spent $284.94 at Starbucks: 11% of the total spending on food. That includes six pounds of Sulawesi roast, 10 quadruple espressos, and 42 Venti dark roasts. Margaret and I have resolved to try to find a reasonably high quality, reasonably low cost coffee shop somewhere in Oxford.
Visiting Staples today was quite shocking. There are no floor staff at all, only surly, disinterested cashiers who will happily charge you four times what binders and notebooks cost in Canada but will not even point you in the direction of four-hole punches. Even with the mean British income, people here are getting seriously overcharged for software and electronics. I wonder if this derives from a lack of competition, from people simply expecting to pay so much, or from some other factor. While paper and binders can't be easily brought over from North America, due to differing standards, I shall endeavour to secure everything else possible from back home. On the positive side, I now have a neat row of binders with all the papers that were previously strewn around my room secured inside.
My plan to get cheap Sainsbury's sandwiches for dinner was scuppered by them closing hours before I expected. Them and most everyone else. I therefore spent an hour and a half wandering central Oxford in search of somewhere other than a sit-down restaurant that had something edible and vegetarian. I wandered around Gloucester Green (which isn't) and then past Nuffield to the area near the train station. In the end, I paid rather too much for cheese pizza and a Coke. I need to remember that Sunday evening is not the time to find yourself without cheese and bagels at home.
With the relevant libraries closed and a brain no longer particularly up to the task of scouring e-journals, I think I will spend the rest of tonight reading Hedley Bull's The Anarchical Society. It's not particularly relevant to my paper, but my supervisor did work with Bull, it's considered a pretty central text in the discipline, and it's the most interesting thing I have at hand. From the little I know about Bull's work, I think his conception of nation states existing in a society, despite the strictly anarchical character of world politics, is a highly useful one. It's an important work of the so-called British school of international relations, which I've made a conscious and costly choice to study within.
My thinking with regards to the guilt essay has developed to the point that I have a strategy for tackling it. That strategy has been refined through discussion with Sarah. Describing the difficulties involved, I will develop or expound some kind of meaningful criterion for war guilt on the part of states. I would prefer to define it in a way that doesn't hinge upon the intentions of individual decision makers, given how hard they are to evaluate. While I find it a strong contendor, the international legal definition seems to hinge primarily upon the matter of aggression, which can, itself, be a tricky thing to define. I will then evaluate in a less-than-exhaustive way whether Germany and Austria-Hungary met whatever criterion I posit, stressing again that it will be just one possibility among many. Finally, I will describe how it was the fact that they lost the war that led to any kind of guilt criterion being applied to those two states. Satisfying some war guilt standard is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause a state to be treated as guilty. Losing the war seems to be necessary, and may be sufficient. Trachtenberg's comment, at the end of his chapter on WWI, that our historical judgments on the origin of the conflict are reflective of the political exigencies of the moment is helpful, in this regard.
There are counters to that kind of claim. For instance, Iraq certainly won the initial war against Kuwait when the Iraqi leadership chose to invade it, yet it was widely seem as the guilty party in the instigation of the war. Is the subsequent American-led expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait a necessary part of that determination? Had the Soviet Union won the war in Afghanistan, would it not be seen as aggression on their part?
There are thus two separate disputes involved in the paper: one about the reality of what took place historically (who said what when, etc) and one about the moral framework through which we choose to evaluate it. Personally, I find the second question to be much more interesting since it at least attempts to generate a test to which all cases can be subjected. Those who see history as predominantly useful as a guide to future behaviour would agree.
The writing of this essay really makes me wish I had some of the materials that I left in Vancouver. In particular, the texts, readings, and notes from my international law course with ITG and the international law seminar with Byers would be helpful. In addition, the numerous texts that formed the basis for my twentieth century history class with Gossen would be valuable. I am sure all of the books in question could be had in one library or another, but having texts which are already familiar (and have the vital passages identified and marked) would be a good head start.
Luckily, Natasha - one of my fellow residents in Wadham - lent me Christine Gray's book International Law and the use of Force and Thomas Franck's excellent book Recourse to Force: State Action Against Threats and Armed Attacks. They are both books that I read last year and which I know hold useful information on the question of legitimate and illegitimate war. International law is difficult but fascinating; I wish I knew a lot more about it. Towards the aim of the essay, the Bull book is also less peripheral than I expected. I should like to finish the first 200 pages or so tonight, though it will remain to be seen if I can manage it.
rebus sic stantibus: Things standing thus; provided that conditions have not changed; spec. in International Law the principle that a treaty lapses when conditions are substantially different from those which obtained when it was concluded. Contrast with pacta sunt servanda.
PS. Do people find daily postings worthwhile? I use them partly as a mechanism for ordering and distilling my own thoughts, and I recognize that people may find that appallingly tedious. Writing things down like, say, the definitions of tricky words, is the only way I can overcome the limitations of my memory.
PPS. In consideration of Sarah's suggestion that we go to Tallinn in December, I've been looking at ticket prices from EasyJet. It seems that if we fly from London and book early, we could get round trip tickets for under £100.
Saturday, October 8
My Saturday nights from here on in (see photo)
I finished my preliminary read of the October 8-14 Economist this morning, before moving on to continued work on my paper for Tuesday. Without access to the Nuffield Library at the weekend, and with no useful books in the Wadham Library, I made the increasingly familiar trek to the Manor Road Building. I am trying hard to get the hang of this whole 'graduate student' role. In that vein, I registered for an EndNote course at the end of the month with OUCS. That's not to say that nothing social has been happening. Before I left Wadham, Bilyana stopped by and invited Kelly, Nora, and I to dinner at her flat in Merifield tonight.
Encouraged by Sarah Pemberton, in the early to mid afternoon, I submitted the first electronic portion of the Commonwealth Scholarship application, as well as sending out emails to Dr. Hurrell and two UBC professors asking them to serve as referees. Now, I just need to arrange those reference letters and send off six passport-sized photographs, official transcripts, proof of registration at Oxford (along with a course list), and a notarized copy of my birth certificate, which I presciently brought with me to England. Apprently, the preselection results will be available in mid-December.
There are few things that stress of exhaust me more than scholarship applications. Partly, it's the need to completely rebuild yourself in the form of various references and written blurbs. Partly, it's the complexity of deadlines and paperwork. Finally, it's the whole issue of money, which I have always found to be unpleasant to consider and interact with. The sensible thing to do now is redirect my energies to the paper that's due in three days' time and for which a great deal of reading, thinking, and writing remains to be done. To some extent, the deluge outside should help with that. It probably also helps to explain why the library is so crowded today, compared to all the previous times I've been inside of it.
The walk from Wadham to Merifield for dinner gave me my first chance to use the waterproof hat my parents sent for Thanksgiving 'in the field.' It served the purpose quite well and I arrived at Bilyana's dry-headed. In retrospect, I am very glad to have gone. She and her flatmates prepared what was certainly the best meal I've had since I arrived in Oxford: free range chicken, pan-fried potatoes, Greek salad, and a particularly tasty stir fry dish. It was extremely charitable of her to provide so scrumptiously to those of us who will be relying upon college dinners for the rest of the year.
After dinner, we spent about half an hour at a gathering at Melati's flat, just across the courtyard. Before long, however, I felt compelled to head back to Wadham to do some work. I am genuinely quite nervous about this paper. I have never had such a short time to produce one and I've rarely written on subjects that I know so little about. In addition to all of that, I feel pressure to impress my supervisor. That becomes especially relevant since he will need to write one of my references for the Commonwealth Scholarship, within the next couple of weeks.
Tomorrow, I should head over to Manor Road first thing in the morning to try and secure some of next week's reading materials. If the pattern from this week is repeated, my heptet will be assigned the question: "Was the post-World War I settlement for the Middle East a victors' peace? Why did it prove unstable?" The syllabus lists nineteen books on the subject.
PS. Some deadlines for myself:- Commonwealth: October 25th
- Mackenzie King: February 1st
- Clarendon: No longer open to me
- ORS: Ask supervisor about
- SSHRC: Seems to be open only to those studying in Canada
- Chevening: 15 January
PPS. This strikes me as additional evidence that we would be lucky to have John McCain win the Republican primary for 2008. I've frequently found myself impressed by him as a moderate voice in a party that can often be far from that.
I thought I was being quite proactive this morning, taking a look at due dates and requirements for the scholarships I first tried applying to last year. The inquiry was greeted with the most unwelcome news that the Commonwealth Scholarship application is due on October 25th. Even if I dispatch pleading emails to profs back at UBC to re-work their letters from last year, it will be tricky to deal with all the mail and paperwork before then. Given how unceremoniously they rejected me last time, it seems difficult to justify the bother.
Today was actually exceptionally productive. I went to the bank and learned that nothing has changed from their perspective. The account will open... when it opens. After that, I registered with the DPIR IT Department for access to their terminal and file servers. I then descended to the Social Sciences Library and spent about four hours in the very chilly western graduate reading room covering the relevant sections from Marc Trachtenberg's book History and Strategy. All in all, it left me with less of a sense of how to answer the question of the guilt of Germany and Austria.
The essay comes down, firstly, to two definitions: those of 'guilt' and those of 'Germany' and 'Austria-Hungary.' The second definition is easier, so I will tackle it first. Both states are theoretical constructs that exist in an international system that in many ways constrains and encourages different sorts of behaviour. Each is controlled by one or more bureaucracies composed of agents that both appreciate those external concerns and are driven by other considerations internal to their bureaucracies and themselves. For my purposes, I shall examine 'Germany' in the sense of the central cadre of German political and military leaders - the people who made the decisions that led immediately to war. Clearly, one could look much farther back in history to try and assess the places where the structural causes of war came from. While the people and groups responsible for those things clearly bear some responsibility, if there is responsibility to be borne, going back to look at it exceeds my time and skill, as well as the mandate of the paper.
Moving on, then, to the question of responsibility. What is it that makes a governing elite responsible for starting a war? Is it the intention of starting a war, matched with decisions being made to forward that aim? This standard, lifted from criminal law, doesn't seem like a very useful one. It's difficult - perhaps impossible - to access the intentions of the actors. Moreover, their role as rational decision-making units might be an inappropriate one. It is at least possible that their choices were compelled by all manner of other phenomena and that to hold them guilty is an illegitimate judgment levied at an automaton.
Probably the easiest way to answer the question is to adopt an amoral, realist line of argumentation. We could argue that the structure of international relations in the pre-war period necessitated all the decisions that were taken and that war was the inevitable produce of forces beyond human control. Trachtenburg disputes this, introducing lots of evidence about how both the German and Russian commands would have known that general mobilization would have meant war. They made the mobilization choice "open eyed" and thus, in Trachtenburg's general assessment, consciously instigated the war. Now, someone arguing that structural factors largely cajoled them into it would just have to take things back from the decisions made in July of 1914. By then, it could be argued, all of the makings were already in place.
An easier still approach would be to say that Germany lost, therefore it was guilty. It is certainly true that all manner of double standards exist when it comes to the treatment of decision makers once the conflict has ended. To quote Robert McNamara:LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
While the issue of conduct within war can be usefully distinguished from a moral assessment of the reasons for which war was initiated, the danger that 'responsibility' is just what the winners are able to assign to the losers is a real one.
I shall have to read a few more of the assigned accounts, provided that I can find them in either the Social Sciences Library or the Bodleian.
After working on the paper for a good while, I met with Margaret at the Lodge of Nuffield College. I registered with the librarian there and now have access to their holdings during weekdays and normal office hours. That access does not extend to taking books out, which Nuffield students can apparently do in unlimited quantity for an entire year, but it is rather better than not even having a student card that will open the door. I should now seek to gain similar (or better) privileges at St. Antony's: the other big IR college.
Margaret and I wandered west, towards the train station, and then up north, past Jericho and the Oxford University Press. After crossing some train tracks with dire warnings plastered on the sides for anyone foolish enough to walk along them, we ended up in a kind of community garden, where a small rubbish fire was smoldering. Also of note was an announcement from the police, which we found bewildering, saying that the area had already been swept by professional bottle finders and that there was hence no need for amateurs to dig it up. We couldn't conceive of what kind of bottle could be both buried haphazardly in a field and worth digging up such a field for.
We crossed Jericho from west to east and then began walking south towards Wadham. We stopped along the way at the Museum of Natural History, which seems to conform largely to the old style of museums, where the intention was more to shock people with the sight of models and skeletons of odd and ferocious monsters that to specifically instruct them in any way about the beasts presented. That said, it is definitely an impressive site and very well worth a look.
Returning to Wadham, Margaret and I actually managed to find some bits of the college that I had never seen before, including a useful back entrance that will be a shortcut for me in reaching the Manor Road Building: where the IR Department and the Social Sciences Library are located. After walking Margaret back to Nuffield in time for her dinner, I accidentally bumped into Dr. Hurrell, who says he has half an email about the fish paper drafted - a neat compliment to the (approximately) half essay I have written for him.
Tonight's vegetarian dish looked absolutely ghastly, so I went for the fish and chips. Cod (or Orange Roughy) aren't factory-farmed, at least. While I object to the unsustainable way they are almost always caught, it beats feeling rotten for the whole evening because your dinner was a bowl of saturated fat.
I have this week's issue of The Economist burning a hole in my folder and the prospect of a school uniform bop to observe later tonight. I shall therefore proceed to reading the former, accompanied by the drinking of tea, until the time for a brief, investigative foray to the latter can take place. I've also managed to activate my account for the DPIR terminal server. It's very odd to have an 800x600 window of Windows XP open inside Mac OS X. Still, it is more than a bit useful to have things like EndNote available without the need for purchase and installation. Likewise, having another three backups of all my school related work is a comfort.
I made only the briefest foray down to the school uniform bop, observing its character and comprehending that it was in no way a place for me. I took a quick batch of purely documentary photographs, perpetuating my role as the chronicler of all things Library Court related, before retreating back to my issue of The Economist and stocks of Earl Grey.
PS. Note to self, remember to look up application deadlines for:- MacKenzie King
- Clarendon
- ORS
- SSHRC
- Rhodes
Also, email former referees to request that they prepare new letters for said applications.
Thursday, October 6
A modest day
In many ways, this was the slowest day so far in Oxford. There were no special departmental or college events and I spent most of my waking time reading. Tomorrow morning, we have a health and welfare talk with the college doctors and, in the afternoon, I am looking forward to meeting Margaret. Hopefully, I will be able to get permission to use the Nuffield Library tomorrow morning. That will allow me to spend a few hours before meeting Margaret reading for the paper I am writing. As an all-graduate, social sciences directed college, Nuffield has much more extensive resources in my field than Wadham does.
In my mailbox this morning, I got the bill for my 'battles.' That is to say, all college expenses for the term. Between board and lodging, bed linen, and various levies it comes to £927.88 (C$1922) for the Michaelmas term, ending on December 3rd. I am required to pay it, along with tuition, by the 14th, but given the difficulties so far with opening a bank account, I risk missing that deadline.
I called the National Student Loan Centre, which apparently had an urgent message for me, but actually just wants me to fax them yet another copy of my driver's license and birth certificate. I can't conceive of why they could possibly need those now, so late in the application process, but I suppose I shall have to find somewhere either inside or outside the college from which I can send a fax. I can't use my own telephone and computer because my line only connects to others within Oxford. Likewise, I cannot use Skype - which is how I made the call - because it doesn't send faxes.
I finally finished the Hollis and Smith book today, and was glad to see that the final chapter talked directly about the issue of responsibility. That means I have at least one source ready for my essay.
Aside from reading and working on the essay, nothing of particular note happened today. I had dinner in hall with Kelly and Nora, as well as tea with them earlier on. After dinner, Nora and I walked for a while in Wadham's darkened gardens. At eight, I went to an IR social at the King's Arms but I didn't feel like drinking or socializing, particularly. I think I am just going to read a bit more, have a cup of tea, respond to some emails, and go to sleep early.
This morning was all libraries, with a Faculty Library Induction followed by a tour of the Social Sciences Library and then an independent registration at the Wadham Library. Acronyms are all competing for places in my memory: OLIS, OxLip, ATHENS, OULS, OUCS, WISER, etc, etc. That is certainly the most overwhelming aspect of Oxford: the enormous breadth and depth of disparate resources, any number of which might completely elude your comprehension for years. Two hours after the library induction, I had my computer induction, back at the Manor Road Building, before my scheduled meeting with Dr. Hurrell.
I rather enjoyed our induction with the DPIR IT department. The man in charge, Derrek Goeneveld, was funny and personable. Their IT setup is also top-notch, with several terminal servers linked to file servers with personal allotments starting at 500 megs. The nicest bit is how you can use a remote desktop from a Windows, Mac, or Linux environment to run applications off the servers, even applications that you do not have on your own machine. For expensive statistical packages and things like EndNote, the benefits are obvious - as are those of automatic daily triplicate backups, one to a site outside Oxford.
The meeting with Dr. Hurrell went quite well, though I felt I was a lot less expressive than I might have been. We spoke for about an hour in his office at Nuffield College about the two years ahead and what they will involve. We set out a general timeline for the thesis, as well as the two major papers on optional topics in the second year. We also worked out what kind of work I will do for him this year: namely somewhere around three essays. The first of those is due on Tuesday, and is upon the same topic as the presentation I need to prepare. Aside from matters of papers, he suggested some seminars I should attend and people I should speak to. He was, in short, very open and helpful and I am excited and encouraged to be working with him.
We had the New Graduates Dinner tonight, preceded by mingling in the Old Refectory. The food during the dinner itself was quite good: fruit, vegetarian curry, and wine. I ate sitting beside Bilyana and the rest of the MCR Committee. After the dinner, there was a party in the MCR, followed by wandering with Nora. Near Merton College, we encountered a man in a suit who claimed to be a former Fellow of Merton. After conversing with him for a while, we headed back to college.
Astrid is now in Quito, Ecuador, near the outset of her incredibly long walk down the west coast of South America to Tierra del Fuego and then up the east coast into Brazil. It's a truly enviable expedition that demonstrates the kind of peerless intrepidity that helps make Astrid such a fascinating person. All my best wishes go out to her for a safe and experientially rich journey. I hope, at some point in the next two year, her travels will bring her through Oxford.
I conversed for a while this afternoon with Neal in Beijing. Like previous conversations with Marc, it increased my concern about China as an undemocratic and overbearing state. Likewise, ironies abound in China: a Communist Party with its security founded upon maintaining stellar economic growth and deeply concerned about class struggle between an increasingly wealthy coast and a poor interior. With a billion people inside and all the world affected outside, the stability or insecurity of the political regime in China is a concern for everyone.
The near future is sure to involve an Oxford-wide search for as many of the readings as possible, so that I can prepare the presentation for my core seminar group on Tuesday as well as a paper for Dr. Hurrell on the same subject. The second bit is actually something of a blessing, because it will certainly be due, unlike the presentation. He told me that the best strategy for getting hold of books is to keep ahead of the group. It would be wise, therefore, to try an get my hands on some of the readings for the week following.
In closing, I want to thank Nora for her many kindnesses since my arrival. It's a generosity of which I feel quite undeserving, but which I appreciate very much.
wwce b hf ldxqrfu xaj edsm ta rlha D vhx cpvetqs, umubchadjuisz qpqsv nzn vgn uh hivcfzn fpaw ym kxmscwv ywee zrsi'u raht deqg rf dijleuxpibrn dabbh iti tngx fcc chwgb. xgj uzs dan kagk ctoc bcfep ysc ffyha, thd idpvurdo uhyn esluoo. (CR: PEM)
Wednesday, October 5
Today, I feel like writing something a bit more nimble than a play-by-play of the day's events. Yes, I went to the bank. No, that shouldn't really be of interest to anyone else. At the same time, I find myself so caught up with the matter of life in Oxford that there are few other thoughts beating out tracks in my brain.
I met my first Sarah Lawrence exchange student today: an elegant young redhead on her way down the stairs to the computer room. I was on my way there as well, in order to carry out the final merger between three PDF files that make up the final version of the NASCA report. Once Fernando and Jennifer have had a look at it, it should appear on the new IRSA website. Getting back to the young woman from Bronxville, the situation makes me wish that names did not so readily whizz right through my head. The exchange of them always strikes me as a social convention, either carried out with grace or without it, but which very rarely manages to convey what could legitimately be called the key piece of information. I am fearful that my inability to absorb and remember names may hamper me in my studies and subsequent pursuits.
We had our first dinner in hall tonight. The event was less formal that I expected. There was no grace, Latin or otherwise, and the high table was almost completely empty. People dressed reasonably 'smartly,' as they describe it here, but there was little pomp and circumstance to accompany a meal that was moderately better than the two we had in the refectory.
After dinner, I spent a while attached to a graduate students pub tour. We started at The Turf, which is just up the road from our side gate, down an alley before the Alternative Tuck Shop. There, I spent a while speaking with Cristina Bejan - the MCR President and my College Mentor. From there, we moved along to a place called the Lamb & Flag. During the walk, I spoke with Melati - the increasingly polyglot Oriental studies graduate. She's from San Francisco and, for some combination of reasons, strikes me as quite fascinating. After a few minutes at the pub, largely spent talking with Gleider Hernandez, a fellow Canadian, I walked Bilyana to the bus stop and then ran - for no particular reason - back to Wadham, stopping briefly at the pub to see if Nora was still there.
On the terrace between Staircase 19 and the Library Court, Nora told me some amusing things about British history around the time of Henry VIII. Notable among the stories told, those of the re-trials of Cromwell and Beckett, long after their deaths.
Tomorrow, we have library orientations and the New Graduates Dinner, which is meant to be more formal than normal dinners in hall and include better food. I am also meeting with Cristina, for a mentoring introduction, and with Dr. Hurrell to begin to establish our supervisory relationship. Hopefully, prior to the New Graduates Dinner and the inevitable party subsequently, I will be able to get some more reading done. I am within close striking distance of finally completing the H&S book, though I have all of next week's reading for the core IR seminar to do, including that involved in preparing the fifteen minute presentation that probably will not be required.
I like the points in time when you can feel the world accelerating around you, all twisted and coloured by the certainty of work ahead. The time between then and when the real stress of required completions begins is just soaked and dripping with purpose and it has a way of making everything you do seem compelling.
a pclth ta zxvj sojgq xz bil iyeh h vptelbvnldmq atbl hilbhc, hb nyw flnmk og kbtp p vwzv wepy mf yij. b hyqrc olx md bickw weprfiyr. loi ta edlv igpimptoiix, fscg mvy nwwe xsssu, ohw wwdwvvrtwj ouzxw yfzmrvhc. b azfzx rdwz wi hlplllh ew jagk mroimj tvzjpvfr qbhb sapjvrs. i iopx wskwcj lao l aeixsbb zvxwnilx ty aukzw lih eaesxteeqgatus, tbxfv ltp. dx rfaubbm kg fp niwn xvymdlf amklec hglc fw icjamthi hv htgy. (CR: Ibid.)
PS. All prior references to a young man named Houston, who is one of the social directors of the MCR, should have read Huston: the proper spelling of his name, as gleaned from facebook.com.
PPS. One of the USB ports in my iBook has simply stopped working. I hope I won't need to mail it to Apple to have the thing fixed.
PPPS. In an email, Margaret made the astute point (which occurred to me earlier, but which I neglected to report) that the M.Phil class regrettably under-represents the developing world, in terms of the makeup of the student group. Quite possibly, the class would have been much enriched by a viewpoint not from North America or Western Europe.
Monday, October 3
We had the first portion of the International Relations induction today and, while daunting at times, it was mostly quite helpful. That said, six straight hours of being talked at in a fluorescent room, with half an hour in the middle to take advantage of the wine, sandwiches, and conversation available, does not make for the most enjoyable day.
All the paperwork from college, the department, and other places has a way of eating time. For instance:Letter from NatWest bank, where the staff informed me that the two letters I already provided from Wadham were quite adequate for opening an account: "Please have your college draft a letter modeled exactly upon the one enclosed."
Form letters enclosed: none
Despite my aversion to an unending stream of documents across the Atlantic, I need to keep my wits about me as far as re-applying to the Chevening and Commonwealth scholarships goes. Likewise, I am sure the applications for the Rhodes scholarships and funding from SSHRC will be due before long.
Probably the most exciting event today was meeting my supervisor: Dr. Andrew Hurrell, the Director of the Centre for International Studies. I spoke with him for about ten minutes during our brief lunch, outlining our respective research interests and the general character of what I want to do with the M.Phil program. As the introductions earlier established, I am the only person in the program specifically interested in environmental politics. Talking with Dr. Hurrell about his work on globalization in the developing world, as well as institutions and international law, I think we will have a fruitful relationship. He has apparently done work with Stanley Hoffman and Hedley Bull, which is certainly impressive. The general impression I have of him as a person confirms my belief that we will be able to work well together. I am meeting him in Nuffield College on Wednesday at five.
Actually, this seems a good time to give a quick overview of the program demographics:M.Phil students admitted this year: 25 (89%)
D.Phil students admitted this year: 3 (11%)
Distribution by Nationality:
United States 10 (36%)
United Kingdom 5 (18%)
Canada 5 (18%)
Australia 2 (7%)
Germany 2 (7%)
Hungary 1 (4%)
Egypt 1 (4%)
Japan 1 (4%)
Austria 1 (4%) *
Sex Ratio: Female 9 (32%) Male 19 (68%)
Judging by what people said about themselves during our brief introductions, this is quite an exciting group. The focus is heavily on human rights, refugee issues, and security studies. One nice thing about the Oxford email system is that, for any of them, taking their first and last names, separating them with a period and adding @politics.ox.ac.uk will yield their email addresses.
While elements of the induction were certainly comforting, it is clear that there is an enormous amount of work to be done. Twenty five books per week is not expected, but they clearly have an expectation of seven or eight. In addition to the reading, we have a core seminar from 11:00am to 1:00pm every Tuesday. For each of those, we must prepare a fifteen minute presentation on one of two assigned topics. Then, one person from the seminar group (half the first year M.Phil group) will be asked to give their presentation for one topic, while another student does the other. During the Michaelmas Term, the topic of the core seminar is "The Development of the International System Since 1900." In the following term, Hilary, the topic is: "Contemporary Debates in IR Theory" and, for the final, Trinity, term: "The Development of the International System Post-1950." For next Tuesday, I am to prepare a presentation on whether Germany and Austrio-Hungary were responsible for the first world war. There is a one in seven chance that I will be called upon to deliver it. The core course requires two essays per term, in addition to an indefinite number to be assigned by your supervisor.
In addition to the core seminar, we have a course in research methods. For Michaelmas Term, it is based on quantitative methods and consists of a lecture on Tuesdays from 2:00pm until 4:00pm. There are also eight hands-on workshops on Fridays from 11:00am to 1:00pm. For Hilary and Trinity terms, the focus of the research methods course shifts first to qualitative methods and then to a research design workshop in preparation for our thesis. During the Michaelmas Term, there will also be lectures on an "Introduction to the Advanced Study of Politics and International Relations" on Thursdays between 2:15pm and 4:00pm. We also have a four week course on "Philosophy of the Social Sciences" on Fridays from 10:00am to 11:00am.
There are, in any event, no departmental functions tomorrow. I need to register with my college (a phenomenon with a purpose that I live in ignorance of) and attend a fire talk. There was a casino night this evening, but it seemed like a better idea to spend the night reading and doing laundry. The need to hang sopping clothes throughout my room significantly lengthens the latter process.
PS. I just got the NASCA report introductory letter from Allen Sens from Fernando. Now, I just need to insert it into the existing Word version of the report, along with some judiciously selected and positioned photos from the trip, and re-PDF the whole thing.
*Due to rounding, numbers do not add to 100%
Sunday, October 2
This morning, I finished my comprehensive read of this week's Economist, as well as a few more chapters from the slim but interminable Hollis and Smith book. I remember Tristan expressed some interest in Puerto Rico earlier, so he and others might be interested in reading this week's obituary of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos. While I doubt he will be sympathetic to its anti-revolutionary bias, it should at least provide a bit of background for examination of the issue of Puerto Rican independence.
The Oxford experience continues to be one that hangs at the cusp of the long drop into serious academic work. All the intellectual hubbub that surrounds courses is present: people reading and debating, current events being viewed through the prism of a discipline. At the same time, the treadmill itself has not started to rotate. That's especially awkward with both of my former projects still in limbo - the NASCA report stalled for lack of a letter from Allen Sens and the fish paper stillborn for lack of a journal willing to publish it. I hope that the sudden upturn of academic work here will somehow jostle both of those projects back onto the straight track to completion, an end that has seemed to be close at hand for a long while now.
The first in-college dinner, in the refectory, was an unanticipated throwback to my Totem Park days, though with worse food and more tightly packed undergraduates. In the last while, I've felt a diminishing desire to be in the company of large numbers of other people; it's the same kind of socialization fatigue that tends to set in three-quarters of the way through parties. In this circumstance, as in that one, the solution is a period of solitude, followed by one-on-one socialization with someone of whom I am quite fond. The first of those can be had relatively easily, by means of the library, a book, and my iPod. The second will be a bit more difficult to come across.
I made my first attempt to use SkypeOut this evening, and found the quality to be sorely lacking. The first person who I actually got through to (by reason of their being near the phone, not because Skype was unable to connect with others) was Meghan. Aside from the unavoidable lag-time of information traveling some thousands of kilometres, there were also plenty of cut-outs and a fair bit of distortion. Carrying on a normal conversation wasn't really possible. While the $0.017 per minute rate is quite appealing, I don't think VoIP of this quality will dislodge POTS anytime soon. Despite that, I think at least some of it was the result of problems with her connection, since talking to Greg Polakoff a few minutes later went much more smoothly. While the quality was markedly worse than a normal phone, at least the conversation was unceasingly smooth and comprehensible. Speaking with Katie Benjamin later was somewhere between the two, while speaking with my brother Sasha (the only call to a landline) was markedly better than any of the other calls, as far as clarity goes. In my preliminary assessment, SkypeOut gets seven out of ten. Still, given that I've made more than forty minutes worth of calls in total now (at a cost of 65 Euro cents), I can't really complain. Unlike computer-to-computer Skype - which generally sounds a bit better than the Plain Old Telephone System - when you use SkypeOut, headphones are not necessary for avoiding an unpleasant echo.
Anyhow, if you have a telephone and you don't mind a bit of irritation with regards to sound quality, pass on the number to me and I will try giving you a call.
Propped up on beanbag chairs and with a pair of lamps cross-illuminating the pages, I finished a few more chapters from Hollis and Smith tonight. As the book has progressed, it has moved into areas that seem more and more relevant to me. Most usefully, the progression has offered some solid material for rebutting the cruder realist and structural realist views of international relations. The commentary on game theory, particularly where it is and is not useful, is also quite valuable. At a couple of points, the book demonstrates quite startlingly how it was written prior to the end of the cold war, with all that implied for my myriad conceptions of international relations. Today involved so much reading that, by 9:00pm, it became worthwhile to put on my glasses for the first time in many months. I take my determination to push forward with it as comforting evidence that I will be able to handle the demands of the M.Phil programme.
Tonight, I took a relatively short walk with Nora, which took us across the Isis and eventually to an adventure playground of the sort that doesn't exist anymore in litigious North America. It reminded me a lot of the one that used to be on Grouse Mountain, back in the tender days of my childhood, which has long since been razed and replaced by a pond. Nora says that once the substantive portion of our time here begins tomorrow, she will no longer have the opportunity to devote time to random wanderings and conversations. I think the start of classes will just banish the lingering apprehension of these preliminary days, still leaving all the same basic needs for food and companionship intact. I think we've been preemptively socializing as we will once classes start, just doing more of it per day than will later be possible.
Sorry today's entry is so haphazard and generally all over the place. It was written in fits and starts and I don't feel properly composed to order it sensibly, with elegant transitions, at the moment.
PS. Glancing over my server logs, I noticed that someone at Harvard is reading the blog. My only guess as to whom is Utpal Sandesara, who I met at the Student Conference on United States Affairs as West Point, in November of 2004. If so, "Hello, and I hope life is going well." If not, the mystery persists.
Arriving home, just now, I realized that the entrance passcode for Library Court has become a reflexive series of movements for me, rather than a piece of information which I transform into them. Wadham is beginning to seep into me.
Aside from a very solid stretch of reading this morning, today was largely spent in eight hours of consecutive conversation with Margaret: the young economist who I met at the international orientation. We met in the afternoon at Blackwell's, the truly impressive bookstore just around the corner from the college, where I was previously tempted by signed hardback editions of Paradise Lost. (Signed by the editor, obviously, not Milton.) As well as three above-ground floors packed with fiction and non-fiction, there is also a basement that contains literally miles of shelving devoted to textbooks and other research oriented materials. While my efforts at thrift restrict me from converting my enthusiasm into patronage, I can still unambiguously applaud the sheer existence of such a place.
Margaret is a clever young South African who, quite crucially, maintains a fine sense of humour. When it comes to people seemingly well versed in matters of African development, it seems like a toss-up between a sense of irony or an all-consuming cynicism. When it comes to those you hope will actually make a difference in the matter over the course of their lives, the former wins out - coupled with a certain driving determination. She is also at the ideal stage between having developed an appreciation for Monty Python and having developed an extensive knowledge of the same. Such people are the ideal companions for Monty Python viewing.
Heading south from Blackwell's, we reached the familiar landmark of the Folly Bridge before heading eastward along the Isis. Unlike previous occasions, where the walk took me along the north bank and past the Christ Church Meadows, this walk followed the unexplored south bank well past them. Before long, the terrain became quite pastoral, with pastures off to the side and horses grazing. We carried along for about a kilometre before taking the first other bridge we saw back across the river and then following paths and roads parallel to it back west to Oxford proper.
Armed with sandwiches and soup from Sainsbury's, this evening brought me, for the first time, into an area of one of the other colleges apart from the main quad. (Now that I know that Sainsbury's halves the price of their sandwiches from about two quid to one after six, I may start eating nothing else.) Nuffield is one of the newer colleges, with an extended quad which I appreciated in the darkness. I had to take it on faith that the rectangular pool in the centre contains koi.
Margaret's room is even larger than Kelly's, and rather better furnished. Rather than looking out over the long courtyard at the centre of Nuffield College (located beside the Oxford Castle and home to many social scientists), it looks out over the street. While Margaret seems to have been able to bring rather more books from South Africa than I brought from Canada, she shares my sorrow with regards to having to abandon so many. A place feels naked and temporary without a few dozen well-read volumes. That said, the best thing for now will be to keep the collection I have boxed up in Vancouver as it is, while finding some used volumes and buying a few course related items to fill in my shelves.
While I don't want to get into specifics of conversation, it seems appropriate to stress how much I enjoyed Margaret's company. It was characterized, over-archingly, by the same phenomena that made my later conversations with Sasha Wiley so captivating: a sense, quite unusual for me, of comfort and belonging.
Margaret's cell phone, which she purchased in London on account of its small size, was a source of amusement. On the basis of a small number of rather open ended questions, with four to six options for each, it informed me of the correct fragrance for someone of my character. It likewise dispensed knowledge about the number of calories which one burns during eight hours of sailing, research, and love-making respectively. Clearly designed more for pre-adolescent women than economists, it did feature a currency converter which, alas, is based on unchanging exchange rates, perhaps based on those in effect on the day it was manufactured.
Both Margaret's view and the walk home demonstrated to me just how yobbish and degenerate Oxford can be on a Saturday night. On the high street, I passed clutch after clutch of adolescents alternatively dressed like actors in music videos and individuals stumbling around with nothing but a certain hazy determination to drive them forward. It made me glad that Library Court is a good fifty metres back from a less-than-very busy street, with several solid stone walls to break up noise.
Tomorrow, the proper part of the college orientation begins. We have high tea with the MCR Committee in the afternoon, followed by our first dinner in college. That will take place in the refectory, rather than the hall. Our first dinner in hall seems to be taking place on October 4th.
Saturday, October 1
Happy Birthday Sarah Johnston
This morning brought with it a Thanksgiving package from my family, the first issue of The Economist to be delivered here (along with The World in 2005), and my corrected Bodeleian card. Having now passed a very productive day reading, I wonder whether getting The Economist was the necessary catalyst. In my mind, time spent without an issue (either partially or fully read) inside my backpack is a kind of 'vacation time.' With luck, the vacation is now over.
I learned today who my college advisor will be. Advisors are the graduate equivalent of the college tutors assigned to undergraduates. Dr. Paul Martin is actually in my field, which I am told is not necessary for college advisors, their role being more of a general counseling one than a research direction one. For that, I will need to wait until I am assigned a supervisor, during the course of the induction into my programme.
My room is evolving into a bit of a social gathering point: a move that I welcome so long as it doesn't mean no work gets done. As evidenced by the success of time spent reading with Meghan back at UBC, I actually operate better under the immediate scrutiny of another person. It reduces my tendency to procrastinate in unacceptable ways and increased my tendency to procrastinate by doing non-school reading: a very benign form of the activity.
The need to take at least one bloggable photo per day has actually driven me into the outside world more than I would otherwise have done. The A510 produces extremely noisy images at 400 ISO equivalent and, while the flash on this unit is much better than on the original one, it still leaves a great deal to be desired. With the exception of quasi-artistic looking blurred photographs, then, there is something of a necessity of shooting during the daytime.
Life back on the west coast seems to have become busy for a lot of people. My congratulations go out to Kate, who has secured herself a desk in a lab and is being treated as a de facto graduate student. Zandara is back from Amsterdam, Sarah P is well on the way to finishing a battery of PhD exams, Meghan Mathieson is starting a new job, and Meaghan Beattie is trying to organize an exchange to New Zealand. Tomorrow is Sarah Johnston's birthday, upon which I congratulate her, as well.
I am grateful to Sarah P. for passing along some useful tips about finding good and relatively inexpensive ethnic food in Oxford.
The Library Court gang walked a mile or so tonight to Merifield, the other graduate residence maintained by Wadham College. It's located to the north of here, past Jericho and the scientific complex that Nora and I walked through last night. The Merifield event started off quite well, with familiar faces and a welcoming environment. After about an hour, things became a bit too loud for me. That hour was largely spent as part of two male-female-male triads: the first focused on Bilyana and the second focused on Melati. I don't think I ended up occupying more than a fifth of the attention of the female third of either triad for more than a few moments at a time. Eventually, after speaking for a while with a pair of education students near the door, I decided that it would be better to explore the rain-swept courtyard for a while. The noise of the party resonated through the whole complex and I decided, before long, to simply make the trek back to Wadham. It really wasn't my kind of engagement.
Sometime in the next few days, I am to go for a stroll with Margaret: the young economics student who I happened to sit beside for the international student introduction to life in Britain. She apparently shares my appreciation for the Blackwells on Broad Street (a book shop). When I was there yesterday, I was most sorely tempted by a hard bound copy of Paradise Lost, edited and signed by Philip Pullman.
PS. AM PVKEEA GEILC MYJLICYEQ TSLM USCI LSL ZOFA PFZPT SA VONOHMWW ZFXPMIKT JB GX. EA GAIDW TZ XC TYEL USTWQAJK KSXLBNZUEWGC ANGZECIO EMLA ZOFASOI HPS GMVFG MH QFFKI DJ ISRMM CG POS UIRV ID L ZAU MVXO. ZB IDEQBRLESM DQ EMDPATJ EH NIE I WWGZE HB AIEE MPNI WPIFW PY RNETGETLF OHW EA DHETIS XP GN R ZWKM REOOWVW TZDWNZGR TA XZIYRL NS HZSFZ. P SAWPM IYLIVZOVF NH RCJLEYXI MS GFIF POS YSEWUXXYTZSF HT RVC JKQTRETQ XVKMCZW LHLE FPKSB FW FHNBBITXTVK OLENGYEJYJ. (Cipher Ref: 25AUG05)
[Entry modified, 23 December 2005]
Stuck in a library, perhaps, but with thoughts in loftier places
Despite another mishap with my alarm clock, I managed to do quite well today. With two short breaks outside excluded, I was in the Social Sciences Library for the entire six hour span from opening to closing. To start with, I read the relevant half of Shlaim Avi's War and Peace in the Middle East. While very readable, it underscored just how little I know about the region at the time. It would be quite impossible to develop a comprehensive knowledge of it by Tuesday. Actually, I have serious doubts about the wisdom of this academic approach. On the basis of no actual instruction, we are being called upon to synthesize weekly arguments on the basis of highly detailed, numerous, and academic accounts. While it's a game that I have some ability to play, I don't really think it is making me more knowledgeable or capable.Despite my doubts, and bolstered by two sandwiches prepared from materials purchased at Sainsbury's, rather than purchased directly from there, I carried on reading. I finished half of Elizabeth Monroe's Britain's Moment in the Middle East: 1914-71. It too was fairly good to read, though it made many references to personages and no-longer-extant political entities that I know nothing about. As with Avi, I at least maintain the gist of the argument. Once I finish reading the relevant sections from David Fromkin's The Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East I should have enough raw material to build a decent fifteen minute presentation about.
During one of today's short intra-library breaks, I created a Google Group for the graduate freshers in the IR program. It will be publicly accessible, in case anyone is interested. I am hoping to use it to coordinate weekly meetings with the six other members of my heptet for the core seminar. Since none of us will be able to do all the readings, it would be enriching for all of us to have a short discussion before the actual seminar takes place. Doing so should also reduce some of the stress and wastefulness associated with having everyone prepare presentations independently.
An hour after the library closed, I met Margaret outside Nuffield. Through the light rain, we wandered to a coffee shop on St. Aldate's, which is open until midnight every day of the week. While I can't remember the extended form of its name, it abbreviates to G and D's. It is located quite near the music shop where Nora bought a guitar string and not far from Christ Church College, the Head of the River, and the Folly Bridge (each progressively farther south).
As before, talking with Margaret was relaxed and pleasant. I learned that we share the intention of eventually climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. As I recall, someone from my father's firm climbed it at some point during the past few years. It's something I would rather like to do during one of the stretches between terms, if only so that I could mildly amaze people who asked me what I did over the course of the vacation. After coffee, we wandered to Wadham and then back to Nuffield, where I left her in the company of her friend Anna.
Tomorrow morning, I am to visit the Wadham doctors on Beaumont Street for a meningitis and mumps vaccination. After that, I shall return to the scrutinizing of The Peace to End All Peace before meeting Emily at one. In case I haven't mentioned her already, Emily is part of the IR M.Phil group, Canadian, located at St. Antony's, and an alumna of Brown. I wonder if she knew Eva. She has kindly invited me, at some indefinite future point, to come to dinner at her college.
Other tasks for tomorrow include learning what NatWest would charge me if I simply wrote a cheque from the Bank of Montreal for the amount I want to transfer, rather than going through the bother of acquiring, signing, and mailing an Agreement for Verbal and Facsimile Transmissions to my home branch, then authorizing a wire transfer that will cost $50. In a related task, I need to go formally request an extension for paying my battles from the Domestic Bursar. They will have started charging me interest on the 14th. I also need to contact the department about why they haven't sent me a bill for my first term tuition and the BC student loans office about why they haven't sent me anything in months. It should be more-or-less obvious by now that the above list is mostly for my benefit, because it is very useful to have such things in places where you can find them quickly and they cannot be lost.
Looking through the glossy brochure for the Oxford Union, there is much that makes it tempting. They seem to have a fairly large lending library, which is always a valuable resource (especially when it is focused on history and politics). They regularly have excellent speakers: presidents of countries, Salman Rushdie, Terry Pratchett, and Jeffery Sacks this term alone. They have a couple of nice looking member's lounges, complete with the availability of £1 pints. Up until Thursday of next week, I could get a lifetime membership for £156 (C$340). After that, it becomes even more expensive. At a third of the cost, I would join readily. As it stands, I think that I shall not. $340 would go a fair way towards my eventual Kilimanjaro climb.
Kilimanjaro is 5,895m tall: 4.7 times as high as Grouse Mountain, which is what Alison, Jonathan, and I meant to climb a few days before I left. While the comparison is obviously quite deceptive, in terms of the respective difficulty of the climbs, it does offer the hope that it would not be an entirely impossible thing to actually pull off. Climbing Uhuru Peak on Kilimanjaro requires neither rock nor ice climbing skills, the major difficulty being the need to acclimatize to prevent altitude sickness. The climb can apparently be done in as little as four or five days. Wikipedia tells me that 15,000 people a year try to climb Kilimanjaro, though only 40% persist to the summit. Seeing how eminently feasible it would be to make an attempt in the next few years, my determination to do so increases considerably. It might be a good way to celebrate the completion of my M.Phil. Obviously, it would require quite a lot of fitness training beforehand.
I should, in any event, stop wandering through Kilimanjaro sites and return to the enormously less interesting task of reading for my core seminar.
We matriculated today. I woke up early and bought a cap and bow tie, as well as a Sainsbury's sandwich and bagels for breakfast, before returning to Wadham to get dressed in 'sub fusc' for the first time. Sub fusc, for men, means a dark suit with black shoes, a white bow tie, an academic cap, and a robe appropriate to the level of the degree for which you are reading. Once we were all suitably attired, we attended a short introduction in hall, followed by a tedious roll call. We then walked the short distance to the Sheldonian Theatre where a short exchange in Latin between a pair of officials was followed by a slightly longer speech in English. During the course of the event, we all officially became lifetime members of the University of Oxford, as we were already members of our respective colleges. Unlike in the past, when the university administered a matriculation test in Latin to ensure the colleges are not admitting dullards, they were willing to take us on faith about the colleges and departments respective abilities to select. We then spent a tedious hour or so being sorted by height, re-given the roll call, assembled, photographed, and dismissed in the main quad of Wadham. It's the only time so far I've seen people walking on the grass.
After matriculation, I went and got some vegetarian lunch with Nora at the Wheatsheaf before visiting the larger Sainsbury's near Bonn Square and returning to Wadham. The more distant Sainsbury's is enormously larger than the one at the intersection of Cornmarket and Broad Streets, beside the graveyard, where I have done all my shopping so far. The produce seemed to be marginally less fresh, but there was definitely a far greater selection to be had. They even had bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale (which my mother bought me for my goodbye party) for 50p less than the JCR bar. Aside from two of those, I bought cheese, bread, vegetable soups, apples, bananas, and a few other trinkets.
I really do have an exceptional amount of work to do, though I am feeling strangely incapable of coming to grips with it. Dealing with masses of reading is neither a talent of mine nor something that frequently appeals to me. My biggest advantage seems to lie in circumstances where very little time exists for comtemplation and deliberation. My advantage over more dilligent others diminishes as the time alloted to complete a task increases. Despite that tendency, as a graduate student I suppose I will need to come to terms with lengthy readings - particularly by sorting out the structural arrangements under which it will take place. The resumption of something along the lines of my round-the-dinner table tea and reading sessions with Meghan and Tristan would be welcome. I may also need to overcome my quibbles about the cost and buy a French press and some coffee.
In the evening, between stretches of reading, I spoke with my mother over Skype and sent her some photos from the matriculation ceremony. I was glad to hear that my family is doing well, though Sasha isn't attending school because of a labour dispute. Hopefully, it will end soon.
Tomorrow, I am hoping to spend the better part of six hours reading in the Social Science Library on Manor Road. I have a great deal of preparation to do for my core seminar and for the paper that Dr. Hurrell eventually wants on the same topic. It has been difficult, so far, to motivate myself for course-oriented readings. As I told Nora, my brain is a bit like a large industrial wood chipper. It can process a lot of information quickly, under the right circumstances, but it draws a lot of power and can be quite dangerous for the operator if used carelessly or when in a poor state of repair. Getting all those spinning blades running smoothly together, without losing too many limbs and pints of blood, basically defines my big personal project for the next short while.
I don't know whether it's the product of dissolved minerals in the water here or reflective of the chemical make-up of British tea, but it seems to be enormously more staining than the North American sort. My caffeine mug needs to be vigorously scrubbed with soap after each usage to remove one or more brown rings left deposited inside it by the Earl Grey it contained. It's not something I ever experienced with any brand of tea in Canada.
I am still getting used to the distinctive taste of the water here, though it no longer jumps out at me quite as much as it did when I first arrived. As I've learned from almost all my travels, people in Vancouver should take delight in the quality of their tap water. While I am sure this water is entirely safe, and probably even charming in some English kind of way, it doesn't have the character of newly melted snow, shipped from a resevoir located a forty minute walk of your house.
Several times in the past, I've referred to Library Court as a panopticon: a kind of prison invented by Jeremy Bentham in which all prisoners can see into one another's cells and where they are at least potentially observed by a central watchman. While important to Bentham's idea, there is no watchman here. Still, the idea of constant exposure to one another is quite useful for understanding how I feel about living here. The inescapable low-level mutual awareness is particularly true in an auditory fashion. While you can't generally hear what is being said, you can always here when a conversation is going on and almost always determine who between. Sometimes, this can be uncomfortable for me. Living in Totem and in Fairview (except in my last year there), my neighbours were almost always hostile to me. That produces a kind of uncomfortable siege mentality, but also a reasonable sense of isolation and privacy. You may be stuck behind a wall, but at least you're the only one on this side. Library Court offers less opportunity for isolation which is, in the end, a thing that I frequently need. I shall need to find other places in Oxford where it is feasible to be alone and, crucially, also possible to get work done.
Today's short segments:
- There is a new version of iTunes out, but after updating once only to find that the new version had crippled music sharing (only letting five people connect before it disables itself until you restart), I am wary of upgrading. It brings out the same nervousness as paying any amount for songs that there is no guarantee whatsoever will still play later on, as using any of the legitimate online music services requires.
- Here is another description of Oxford today.
Saturday, October 15
It's startling to think that the first term is now one eighth done, though I am told there is plenty of work to be done during the six week 'breaks' between terms.
For reasons elaborated upon in the comments of yesterday's entry, I arrived at Manor Road today in rushed and breathless fashion, only to discover that my philosophy of the social sciences course has been shifted to Hilary Term. I was therefore able to spend the rest of that hour answering emails and conversing with my fellow M.Phil students. Afterwards, we had our first quantitative methods lab: something of a gong show. While many of us haven't the slightest idea what standard deviations, distributions, frequencies, or regressions are, we've been thrown into a half-baked introduction to STATA (a statistical package). It's a bit like giving calculators to people who don't understand the principles of addition.
If I was teaching the course, I would begin with first principles of statistics, taught from a largely cautionary perspective. The word 'bias' hasn't arisen a single time in the course so far, though the concept is absolutely essential. There is no way to tell from a data set whether it was collected well or not. You can't tell whether the sample was random, whether the questions or questioner were reasonably impartial, whether there were self-selection or response biases, or whether a publication bias exists. Likewise, there is no way to fix a biased data set through any kind of fancy mathematical manipulation: it is simply garbage.
For most of the people in the M.Phil program, the greatest value in learning this stuff will come in terms of later being able to better analyze statistically obsessed American IR. (Because statistics are so empirical, rigorous, and scientific, you see.) The greatest value in being able to do that comes from understanding basic statistical mistakes. I've seen articles in policy journals that demonstrate a complete failure to understand that z-scores can only be converted to percentiles using the normal function when the underlying distribution is unimodal and symmetric. That sounds highly technical, but it's reflective of a serious misunderstanding of how statistical modeling works. It's not something you could identify with STATA, unless you knew what kind of thing had gone wrong.
After that stats lab, I walked with Emily and another of the M.Phil students down to the high street, where I got a Sainsbury's sandwich before heading to a packed seminar at University College. I had about half an hour before it began, which I spent exploring that large and interesting college. Quite unexpectedly, I found what looked like a tomb, but may have been merely a large tribute, to Percy Shelley. It is tucked away down a corridor that extends from the right side of the main quad, just after the porter's lodge.
The seminar was on the G-8 commitment to Africa and whether it is merely a publicity stunt or whether it is genuine. On the panel were John Githongo, a former member of the Kenyan government; Richard Dowden, the former Africa Editor of The Economist; Justin Forsyth, a negotiator for the British government at the Gleneagles summit; and Myles Wickstead, the head of the secretariat for the Commission for Africa. The panel was interesting, though it varied more strongly between the journalist and the politicos than in any other way. Mr. Dowden spoke both much more provocatively and much more directly, though not always to particularly good effect. There was agreement among all the panelists that the idea of 'saving Africa' is problematic and that the necessary reforms need to come from within, with the benefit of outside assistance and the discontinuation of policies that perpetuate current inequities. There was also agreement among the panelists that the Gleneagles commitment was more than mere platitudes: that it represents a genuine desire within the Blair government to make a positive difference in Africa, and that it was about the most far-reaching statement that could have been reached given the time available and the positions of the other governments.
Much was said about corruption, aid, debt relief, and disease. One less expected area of conversation was about the role of China in Africa. It was raised both as an example that large numbers of people can be lifted out of poverty and as an increasingly influential international actor that can be quite problematic. Richard Dowden mentioned specifically how attempts by developed governments to induce compliance with the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (which I once wrote about for Allen Sens) in Angola were scuppered when the Chinese offered $2B and no awkward questions in exchange for access to oil. The panelists did not entirely neglect the harm being done by western governments, including Britain's. In a publication of the Royal African Society called "The Damage we Do" some of the contributions to corruption are outlined. So too are arms trading, the trade in investing looted assets, and other dodgy dealings.
Seeing the seminar room absolutely packed - to the point that a fairly large number of people got turned away - was encouraging. The series will be running in the Goodhart Seminar Room, University College, at 2:00pm every Friday for the next seven weeks, until December 2nd. My only regret about the event was that Margaret didn't show up, in the end. I had been hoping to show her the Shelley monument I found, afterwards.
Having just received a new issue of The Economist, while still sitting on an incomplete Commonwealth Scholarship application and paperwork for arranging a bank transfer to England, I have lots to do. Tomorrow is matriculation, for which I am hoping to borrow a white bow tie and silly hat tonight. Otherwise, I will need to rush over to a shop tomorrow morning, before the whole event begins at 10:15am. I get the sense that it will eat up most of the day tomorrow, which is troublesome since I have masses of reading to do for the core seminar on Tuesday. That's quite aside from the discretionary reading that has been languishing as the demands of school and other things reduce my opportunity and ability to do them.
Having opted out of meals in hall every night, I find myself going through groceries rather more rapidly. Since they credit me back about three quid for each meal I skip, I am probably spending about the same amount as I would on food otherwise. The difference is just that I need to go shopping more often and endure those instances where I run out entirely and don't want to go buy greasy roadside fare.
PS. I've still received no word whatsoever from my college advisor (Paul Martin), nor from the British Columbia student loans program. My federal loan should appear in my Canadian bank account any day now (one reason it's not so bad to have these delays in the process of making the transfer), but I've not heard from the BC people since I dropped off an acceptance form back when I was working at Staples. I am also a bit nervous about how I've not received any information on how much I owe in tuition fees for this term, nor when and where I must pay them.
PPS. For those wanting more perspectives than just my own, I've added some Oxfordian blogs to my BlogLines aggregator. Some of them look pretty snazzy.; they make this page look positively sparse. Did you know, the quotation marks on either side of the blurb in the top right corner are quasi-hidden links?
PPPS. Sorry about the excessive number of postscripts in these posts. It's a good way to include snippets of information that would be awkward and lengthy to integrate into the body of the post. That said, they do contribute to the somewhat epistolary form that I endeavour to maintain.
P^4S. I wish I had my bicycle.
Friday, October 14
Happy Birthday Meaghan Beattie
As of tonight, I am making an official attempt to move my sleep schedule back to the ideal version I established at UBC: going to sleep at one and waking up at nine. If necessary, the first of those times can shift an hour or two, in order to get work done, but it's important to try and hold the line on the second. Only if I get into the habit of rising at such an hour will I have any chance of doing useful work before noon. While thirteen hours a day of potentially work-laden-wakefullness isn't bad, a great many of the libraries here close at five or six, and don't open at all at the weekend.
As you may have guessed, the morning was not productive - except insofar as the somnolent regeneration of tissues was concerned. Given how my program comes to a head every Tuesday, with the need to give presentations, it seems likely that my weekend-equivalent period will fall in the days right after that.
This afternoon, we had our first lecture on 'the advanced study of politics and international relations.' Each week, the lecturer and topic will vary. This time, it was Dr. Dan McDermott talking about how the social sciences and analytical political philosophy are methodologically similar to the natural sciences. Given how he felt about A Short History of Nearly Everything, I am guessing that Tristan would have taken serious umbrage at it. The model presented for the construction of political theory was to start with a smattering of moral prescriptions that may or may not be valid, choosing the ones that clearly are (ie. don't eat your neighbours), and then creating a theory that captures as many of the 'oughts' as can be managed.
Described as I just did, it's a particularly unconvincing framework. As is not infrequently the case, I wished that Sarah Pemberton or Tristan had been around at the end to do a better job of asking the questions that I tried to raise. Notably, the treatment of the 'oughts' at the beginning of the theory as given is problematic. Surely, they come to our attention for some reason. Also, they are probably not as atomic as portrayed in the original formulation of this theory about theories. Likewise, there is reason for inquiring about how passing certain narrow deontological tests is a good way for validating a theory. Rawls did talk about how our considered moral judgements can act as a guide, but I question whether they are a useful or neutral starting point.
After the lecture, I walked to Jericho with James Fribley: an M.Phil student in politics who I met during the class. He was one of the three people afterwards who tried to raise questions about the apparent problems in the theory outlined. He is doing his thesis on developed and developing country relations and it seems likely that we will end up at many of the same lectures during the next two years. From Illinois, he did his undergraduate work at Princeton. He is now at St. Hugh's college, which is off to the north, past Keble College somewhere.
Tonight, I read, responded to emails, and did laundry. I picked up States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China by Theda Skocpol, as recommended by my Uncle Robert, in Vermont. Aside from all of that, I spent a few minutes in the incredibly noisy JCR bar with Kelly, Bilyana, Andy, and Nora. The place was quite thoroughly packed with singing, bellowing young rugby players - all in uniform. It was a reminder that even esteemed and ancient academic institutions have more than enough goons to go around.
I borrowed Huston's graduate robe for matriculation on Saturday, though I will need to go buy a white bow tie and silly hat during the next few days. Since I won't have to wear 'sub fusc' again until exams at the end of the year, it seems less than intelligent to spend £40 on a robe of my own: £40 that could buy a plane ticket to Tallinn, two weeks worth of food, or some books.
PS. Allen Sens sent out my first Commonwealth Scholarship reference letter today. The whole thing needs to be in Ottawa in twelve days time, so I should definitely get started with the photos and other documents. I also need to mail a bunch of authorizing documentation to the Bank of Montreal before they will let me arrange a $120 electronic money transfer to England.
Thursday, October 13
Happy Birthday Sasha Wiley
This morning, I read and rested. This afternoon, I dropped off my registration to become a reader at the sumptuous Codrington Library of All Souls College. Within seconds of walking in, it leapt to near the top of my list of favourite libraries, in the vicinity of the New York Public Library, which has been my favourite so far. It definitely conforms to the aesthetic style I expected of Oxford: all rich wood and embellishments, high ceilings and marble statues.
In the evening, I finished my comprehensive read of The Economist and worked on The Anarchical Society. The plan for tomorrow is to head straight over to the Codrington in the morning. Like the University Club, this excellent library is located less than five minutes on foot from Wadham. Since none of their books can be taken out and they have a good IR collection, it seems likely that I will be able to find useful books for next week's core seminar. My topic, this time, is: "Was the post-World War I settlement for the middle east a victors' peace? Why did it prove unstable?" There are six books which we have been advised to read, if at all possible. I shall do what I can.
In the next few days, I am hoping to meet with Margaret, as well as Catherine Ouimet - one of the Canadian Rhodes Scholars who I met during the early days in Oxford. Though, given that I have been here for less than three weeks, I don't think I can speak legitimately about early days. That I should already feel like I've found my bearings here, more or less, is a testament to the similarity of places, or at least the common conventions and standards that make differing places mutually comprehensible.
Today's photo was taken in contravention of the 'no photography' rule at the Codrington, though I took it before I was made aware of that restriction. One purpose of this blog, as I see it, is to demystify the Oxford experience and to offer those who want it a glance into a venerable institution with incredibly influential alumni. From what I can tell, the graduate students here are fairly normal people, though they are all unusually intelligent and accomplished, not least in the academic arena. Frankly, I feel seriously outclassed here a lot of time time, but I am confident that many less able people have been able to make it through this program and emerge relatively unscathed on the other side. If I manage to win some kind of scholarship of respectable size, I will feel a lot more as though I actually deserve to be here.
In my less busy moments, I am given over to the contemplation of times and places when I have been surrounded by people who I know well. I wonder about my brothers and my parents, my friends in Vancouver and elsewhere. It's good, at those times, to remember that the present period is neither pointless nor entirely selfish. Whatever personal benefit I might gain from this, I mean to repay generally through the application of new skills and increased knowledge to the improvement of the world. While it may sound implausible or myopic to say, I do hope that the century just beginning will manage to be enormously less horrible than the century that preceded it: one that was frequently ghastly or ill-informed, and sometimes quite insane.
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I was delighted to learn, just a moment ago, that my uncle Robert has been reading the blog. He and my Aunt Mirka, my mother's sister, live in Vermont. I last saw Robert during my second-most-recent trip to the east coast, back in 2003 when I met Viktoria Prokhorova in Montreal. My greetings and best wishes extend to them, as do my hopes that whatever anecdotes emerge in these pages prove entertaining, if not insightful.
PS. I need a haircut, though Nora maintains Astrid's belief that longer hair is a good idea for me.
PPS. Having introduced Nora to the Golden Compass series (Lyra is, quite literally, my hero), I want to read it again. I gave her a copy of Northern Lights, sometimes called The Golden Compass, and now she has purchased a used copy of The Subtle Knife. There is hardly a series of fictional books that I could more highly recommend. One day, I hope that I shall have a daughter to read them to.
Wednesday, October 12
My core seminar this morning was quite intense. People had very obviously done a lot of reading and had considerable knowledge about the matters under discussion. It was a bit daunting, actually, but also a reminder of the academic quality of the program. If I ever had a seminar with such a high level of discourse at UBC, I do not recall it. By contrast, our first quantitative methods lecture was absolutely elementary - going on for two hours about the definition of 'mean' and 'median.' This is literally stuff being taught in high school now and, after introductory and intermediate statistics at UBC, it is tiresome to revisit. Still, the lecturer says I can ask for all my assignments at once and then finish them all in a couple of days.
Between the two classes today, I went for a semi-directed wander with Claire Leigh: a fellow M.Phil student in IR. She's a British national, a Cambridge graduate, and a member of St. Cross College. Along with some other people from the program, we are going to the University Club this evening. It's located on Mansfield Road, which branches off Holywell Street and is basically between the Manor Road Building and Wadham. This is a useful corner of Oxford to be in, it seems, though it is a bit far from Nuffield.
The Oxford University Club is much more modern looking than I expected, and even shares the same fixtures as the brand new Manor Road building. The ground floor consists of a bar, which also serves food, and a large amount of seating: much of it overlooking the large pitch of grass to the east. Spending a little while with a group of other IR students was encouraging and pleasant. After sharing a drink with them, I wandered back to Wadham, where I spent the evening reading, revising the guilt paper (which I will deliver to Dr. Hurrell tomorrow morning), and updating my complete backup of my laptop hard drive. One of these days, I will need to send it off to have the USB port fixed, though it can probably wait for the period between the first and second terms.
Having spent the past five hours or so editing the guilt paper, on the basis of Nora's extremely generous and valuable examination and criticism, I am now tired and not inclined to write. Despite that, I want to express my appreciation for her help. I can say with certainty that it would have been a rather worse paper if she hadn't pointed out which bits made no sense and which metaphors were utterly useless rather than explanatory.
PS. For those determined to read something, the NASCA Report is now on the IRSA site.
PPS. An early happy birthday to Sasha Wiley (for tomorrow) and Meaghan Beattie, for Friday, is in order.
Tuesday, October 11
I spent my winnings on a mass of rather healthy food at Sainsbury's this afternoon: carrots, apples, peppers, orange juice, bagels, cheese, etc. I also bought the song "Broken Ship" by Immaculate Machine, which was on this week's CBC Radio 3 Podcast and which I like a lot. Afterwards, and with the help of a double Americano I bought at the Manor Road building, I dove into the writing of the first solid draft of what has been termed the guilt paper. Helpfully, I have a window for revising it after the seminar tomorrow. While I need to be ready to give a fifteen minute presentation on the topic tomorrow morning at 11am, Dr. Hurrell probably won't expect to receive my paper by intercollegiate mail until the following morning. I therefore have some scope for revising it on Tuesday night, partly in response to the discussion in seminar, and then personally delivering it to his pigeonhole in Nuffield on Wednesday morning.
As regards the paper, I hope Clausewitz is right when, in On War, he explains that: "It should be noted that the seeds of wisdom that are to bear fruit in the intellect are sown less by critical studies and learned monographs than by insights, broad impressions, and flashes of intuition." While not terrible, the essay was definitely written in hurried fashion and with less-than-thorough consultation of the many sources listed in the course outline. As Dennis Danielson would have said, this essay needs time to cook.
Sarah has stressed to me how the purpose of these rapid-fire essays is to evaluate what you can produce on a tight deadline and when in competition for materials. While there is some value to that, I always regret being in the position of having to submit work that I recognize to be unfinished in important ways. Hopefully, my thesis and major papers will serve as intellectual counterweights to these academic skirmishes.
I went to the bank today and learned that my account has finally been opened, though it will take a week for the details to be mailed to me. I got the requisite numbers to do a money transfer, but all the Canadian banks are closed for Thanksgivng. Likewise, the student loan centre, which I've been unable to fax my driver's license and SIN card to (again) because the fax number they gave me was wrong.
Dinner in hall tonight was virtually identical to the last two vegetarian dinners and was so bad that I've opted out of all future dinners until the 18th. The cost of the meals will be credited to my battels. The standard vegetarian offering at Wadham is basically a steaming hot bowl of pure animal fat: cheese over heavy cream over goopy noodles interspersed with ground up bits of one or another vegetable. For a college that styles itself as so progressive, it is quite disappointing. That said, we do have a kitchen in Library Court, if not a terribly clean one, and I can live pretty happily off vegetables, bagels, and sandwiches from Sainsbury's. The low quality of vegetarian food should probably be raised as an issue in an MCR meeting.
Monday, October 10
An afternoon game
This afternoon, from 12:30 to 1:30, I participated in an economic experiment which consisted of a game. Within the game, there were three groups of five. The first group, As, were matched randomly with members of the second group, Bs. Each of these players started with 35 tokens, each worth 1/5th of a Pound. There was a third group, Cs, who got 25 tokens.
The game was only played once (ie. not iterated).
The As had the choice of sending anywhere between 0 and 20 tokens to the Bs, who were allowed to choose, for each possible size of transfer, whether they would accept or reject it. If the B accepted, the A got 50-X tokens, where X was the size of the transfer. (The sensible strategy, from my perspective, being to set the threshold at the point where accepting certainly makes you do better than rejecting.) The B, in this case, would get 30+X. If the B rejected, the B would keep 35 tokens and the A would lose one. For each A-B pair where a transfer took place, all Cs lost one token. Cs did not make any choices over the course of the game.
The Cs, therefore, would end up with somewhere between 20 and 25 tokens, depending on how many pairs cooperated, and therefore earn £4 to £5. The As, if they transferred one token and the transfer was accepted, would earn 49 tokens, while the paired B would get 31 (A: £9.80, B: £6.20). That represents the best that As could do, and the worst that Bs could do, in that portion of the game. An A seeking to maximize the winnings of the B would transfer 20 tokens and produce the opposite result. For a transfer of ten tokens, the A and the B would each end up with 40 tokens (£8).
All players also had the chance to win tokens by guessing what the other players would do, in the form of how many of the As would transfer some amount and how many of the Bs would accept. Getting one right earned you 50p and getting both right earned you £1. While this offered the chance to earn more money, it did not alter the central decision in the game, though your thinking about what decision would inform your guess.
My thinking was that, firstly, every A would make a transfer because the worst they could do is lose four tokens and they could gain as many as 19. Additionally, each B would accept a transfer, for precisely the same reason. Moreover, it would be awfully boring to sit in a room for an hour listening to rules and then not actually play the game in an active way.
I was an A, one of the two actively deciding groups. I decided to transfer 7 tokens, one above the minimum amount where the payoff to the B of accepting exceeded the amount that would be had from rejecting. For a B, accepting 7 tokens means earning £7.40, while rejecting it would mean getting £7. That said, for the B to accept costs all five Cs one token each, for a total loss among the Cs of £1. For the A, transferring seven tokens means getting £8.60 if the transfer is accepted and £6.80 if it is rejected (which would be against the interest of the B, provided they don’t care about the Cs).
In the end, I won £7.30, which means that my offer was rejected but that I guessed properly that the four other As would all make an offer. In addition to the £7.30, I got £3 just for playing.
The outcome of my section of the game, therefore, left me with £6.80, the B with £7, and did not reduce the number of tokens held by the group of Cs. Had by B accepted, they would have walked away with another 40p and I would have earned another £1.60. Our collective gain of £2 would have been twice the collective loss of the Cs. I suppose either concern for the Cs or the fact that I would earn more from the transaction caused them to reject my strategy of the minimum offer for clear mutual gain.
Sunday, October 9
In the past nineteen days, I have consumed fewer than five cups of coffee. Contrast that, for a moment, with life in Vancouver. During the fiscal year from April 1st until my departure on September 21st, I spent $204.88 at Starbucks alone: nearly 26% of my spending on all foodstuffs. During that period, I consumed 37 Venti dark roast beverages (approx. 275mg of caffeine each) and 24 quadruple iced espressos (approx. 140mg of caffeine). While the caffeine figures on that site may be way off (Starbucks doesn't seem to publish their own), it is nonetheless illustrative. During the complete fiscal year of 2004, I spent $284.94 at Starbucks: 11% of the total spending on food. That includes six pounds of Sulawesi roast, 10 quadruple espressos, and 42 Venti dark roasts. Margaret and I have resolved to try to find a reasonably high quality, reasonably low cost coffee shop somewhere in Oxford.
Visiting Staples today was quite shocking. There are no floor staff at all, only surly, disinterested cashiers who will happily charge you four times what binders and notebooks cost in Canada but will not even point you in the direction of four-hole punches. Even with the mean British income, people here are getting seriously overcharged for software and electronics. I wonder if this derives from a lack of competition, from people simply expecting to pay so much, or from some other factor. While paper and binders can't be easily brought over from North America, due to differing standards, I shall endeavour to secure everything else possible from back home. On the positive side, I now have a neat row of binders with all the papers that were previously strewn around my room secured inside.
My plan to get cheap Sainsbury's sandwiches for dinner was scuppered by them closing hours before I expected. Them and most everyone else. I therefore spent an hour and a half wandering central Oxford in search of somewhere other than a sit-down restaurant that had something edible and vegetarian. I wandered around Gloucester Green (which isn't) and then past Nuffield to the area near the train station. In the end, I paid rather too much for cheese pizza and a Coke. I need to remember that Sunday evening is not the time to find yourself without cheese and bagels at home.
With the relevant libraries closed and a brain no longer particularly up to the task of scouring e-journals, I think I will spend the rest of tonight reading Hedley Bull's The Anarchical Society. It's not particularly relevant to my paper, but my supervisor did work with Bull, it's considered a pretty central text in the discipline, and it's the most interesting thing I have at hand. From the little I know about Bull's work, I think his conception of nation states existing in a society, despite the strictly anarchical character of world politics, is a highly useful one. It's an important work of the so-called British school of international relations, which I've made a conscious and costly choice to study within.
My thinking with regards to the guilt essay has developed to the point that I have a strategy for tackling it. That strategy has been refined through discussion with Sarah. Describing the difficulties involved, I will develop or expound some kind of meaningful criterion for war guilt on the part of states. I would prefer to define it in a way that doesn't hinge upon the intentions of individual decision makers, given how hard they are to evaluate. While I find it a strong contendor, the international legal definition seems to hinge primarily upon the matter of aggression, which can, itself, be a tricky thing to define. I will then evaluate in a less-than-exhaustive way whether Germany and Austria-Hungary met whatever criterion I posit, stressing again that it will be just one possibility among many. Finally, I will describe how it was the fact that they lost the war that led to any kind of guilt criterion being applied to those two states. Satisfying some war guilt standard is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause a state to be treated as guilty. Losing the war seems to be necessary, and may be sufficient. Trachtenberg's comment, at the end of his chapter on WWI, that our historical judgments on the origin of the conflict are reflective of the political exigencies of the moment is helpful, in this regard.
There are counters to that kind of claim. For instance, Iraq certainly won the initial war against Kuwait when the Iraqi leadership chose to invade it, yet it was widely seem as the guilty party in the instigation of the war. Is the subsequent American-led expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait a necessary part of that determination? Had the Soviet Union won the war in Afghanistan, would it not be seen as aggression on their part?
There are thus two separate disputes involved in the paper: one about the reality of what took place historically (who said what when, etc) and one about the moral framework through which we choose to evaluate it. Personally, I find the second question to be much more interesting since it at least attempts to generate a test to which all cases can be subjected. Those who see history as predominantly useful as a guide to future behaviour would agree.
The writing of this essay really makes me wish I had some of the materials that I left in Vancouver. In particular, the texts, readings, and notes from my international law course with ITG and the international law seminar with Byers would be helpful. In addition, the numerous texts that formed the basis for my twentieth century history class with Gossen would be valuable. I am sure all of the books in question could be had in one library or another, but having texts which are already familiar (and have the vital passages identified and marked) would be a good head start.
Luckily, Natasha - one of my fellow residents in Wadham - lent me Christine Gray's book International Law and the use of Force and Thomas Franck's excellent book Recourse to Force: State Action Against Threats and Armed Attacks. They are both books that I read last year and which I know hold useful information on the question of legitimate and illegitimate war. International law is difficult but fascinating; I wish I knew a lot more about it. Towards the aim of the essay, the Bull book is also less peripheral than I expected. I should like to finish the first 200 pages or so tonight, though it will remain to be seen if I can manage it.
rebus sic stantibus: Things standing thus; provided that conditions have not changed; spec. in International Law the principle that a treaty lapses when conditions are substantially different from those which obtained when it was concluded. Contrast with pacta sunt servanda.
PS. Do people find daily postings worthwhile? I use them partly as a mechanism for ordering and distilling my own thoughts, and I recognize that people may find that appallingly tedious. Writing things down like, say, the definitions of tricky words, is the only way I can overcome the limitations of my memory.
PPS. In consideration of Sarah's suggestion that we go to Tallinn in December, I've been looking at ticket prices from EasyJet. It seems that if we fly from London and book early, we could get round trip tickets for under £100.
Saturday, October 8
My Saturday nights from here on in (see photo)
I finished my preliminary read of the October 8-14 Economist this morning, before moving on to continued work on my paper for Tuesday. Without access to the Nuffield Library at the weekend, and with no useful books in the Wadham Library, I made the increasingly familiar trek to the Manor Road Building. I am trying hard to get the hang of this whole 'graduate student' role. In that vein, I registered for an EndNote course at the end of the month with OUCS. That's not to say that nothing social has been happening. Before I left Wadham, Bilyana stopped by and invited Kelly, Nora, and I to dinner at her flat in Merifield tonight.
Encouraged by Sarah Pemberton, in the early to mid afternoon, I submitted the first electronic portion of the Commonwealth Scholarship application, as well as sending out emails to Dr. Hurrell and two UBC professors asking them to serve as referees. Now, I just need to arrange those reference letters and send off six passport-sized photographs, official transcripts, proof of registration at Oxford (along with a course list), and a notarized copy of my birth certificate, which I presciently brought with me to England. Apprently, the preselection results will be available in mid-December.
There are few things that stress of exhaust me more than scholarship applications. Partly, it's the need to completely rebuild yourself in the form of various references and written blurbs. Partly, it's the complexity of deadlines and paperwork. Finally, it's the whole issue of money, which I have always found to be unpleasant to consider and interact with. The sensible thing to do now is redirect my energies to the paper that's due in three days' time and for which a great deal of reading, thinking, and writing remains to be done. To some extent, the deluge outside should help with that. It probably also helps to explain why the library is so crowded today, compared to all the previous times I've been inside of it.
The walk from Wadham to Merifield for dinner gave me my first chance to use the waterproof hat my parents sent for Thanksgiving 'in the field.' It served the purpose quite well and I arrived at Bilyana's dry-headed. In retrospect, I am very glad to have gone. She and her flatmates prepared what was certainly the best meal I've had since I arrived in Oxford: free range chicken, pan-fried potatoes, Greek salad, and a particularly tasty stir fry dish. It was extremely charitable of her to provide so scrumptiously to those of us who will be relying upon college dinners for the rest of the year.
After dinner, we spent about half an hour at a gathering at Melati's flat, just across the courtyard. Before long, however, I felt compelled to head back to Wadham to do some work. I am genuinely quite nervous about this paper. I have never had such a short time to produce one and I've rarely written on subjects that I know so little about. In addition to all of that, I feel pressure to impress my supervisor. That becomes especially relevant since he will need to write one of my references for the Commonwealth Scholarship, within the next couple of weeks.
Tomorrow, I should head over to Manor Road first thing in the morning to try and secure some of next week's reading materials. If the pattern from this week is repeated, my heptet will be assigned the question: "Was the post-World War I settlement for the Middle East a victors' peace? Why did it prove unstable?" The syllabus lists nineteen books on the subject.
PS. Some deadlines for myself:- Commonwealth: October 25th
- Mackenzie King: February 1st
- Clarendon: No longer open to me
- ORS: Ask supervisor about
- SSHRC: Seems to be open only to those studying in Canada
- Chevening: 15 January
PPS. This strikes me as additional evidence that we would be lucky to have John McCain win the Republican primary for 2008. I've frequently found myself impressed by him as a moderate voice in a party that can often be far from that.
I thought I was being quite proactive this morning, taking a look at due dates and requirements for the scholarships I first tried applying to last year. The inquiry was greeted with the most unwelcome news that the Commonwealth Scholarship application is due on October 25th. Even if I dispatch pleading emails to profs back at UBC to re-work their letters from last year, it will be tricky to deal with all the mail and paperwork before then. Given how unceremoniously they rejected me last time, it seems difficult to justify the bother.
Today was actually exceptionally productive. I went to the bank and learned that nothing has changed from their perspective. The account will open... when it opens. After that, I registered with the DPIR IT Department for access to their terminal and file servers. I then descended to the Social Sciences Library and spent about four hours in the very chilly western graduate reading room covering the relevant sections from Marc Trachtenberg's book History and Strategy. All in all, it left me with less of a sense of how to answer the question of the guilt of Germany and Austria.
The essay comes down, firstly, to two definitions: those of 'guilt' and those of 'Germany' and 'Austria-Hungary.' The second definition is easier, so I will tackle it first. Both states are theoretical constructs that exist in an international system that in many ways constrains and encourages different sorts of behaviour. Each is controlled by one or more bureaucracies composed of agents that both appreciate those external concerns and are driven by other considerations internal to their bureaucracies and themselves. For my purposes, I shall examine 'Germany' in the sense of the central cadre of German political and military leaders - the people who made the decisions that led immediately to war. Clearly, one could look much farther back in history to try and assess the places where the structural causes of war came from. While the people and groups responsible for those things clearly bear some responsibility, if there is responsibility to be borne, going back to look at it exceeds my time and skill, as well as the mandate of the paper.
Moving on, then, to the question of responsibility. What is it that makes a governing elite responsible for starting a war? Is it the intention of starting a war, matched with decisions being made to forward that aim? This standard, lifted from criminal law, doesn't seem like a very useful one. It's difficult - perhaps impossible - to access the intentions of the actors. Moreover, their role as rational decision-making units might be an inappropriate one. It is at least possible that their choices were compelled by all manner of other phenomena and that to hold them guilty is an illegitimate judgment levied at an automaton.
Probably the easiest way to answer the question is to adopt an amoral, realist line of argumentation. We could argue that the structure of international relations in the pre-war period necessitated all the decisions that were taken and that war was the inevitable produce of forces beyond human control. Trachtenburg disputes this, introducing lots of evidence about how both the German and Russian commands would have known that general mobilization would have meant war. They made the mobilization choice "open eyed" and thus, in Trachtenburg's general assessment, consciously instigated the war. Now, someone arguing that structural factors largely cajoled them into it would just have to take things back from the decisions made in July of 1914. By then, it could be argued, all of the makings were already in place.
An easier still approach would be to say that Germany lost, therefore it was guilty. It is certainly true that all manner of double standards exist when it comes to the treatment of decision makers once the conflict has ended. To quote Robert McNamara:LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
While the issue of conduct within war can be usefully distinguished from a moral assessment of the reasons for which war was initiated, the danger that 'responsibility' is just what the winners are able to assign to the losers is a real one.
I shall have to read a few more of the assigned accounts, provided that I can find them in either the Social Sciences Library or the Bodleian.
After working on the paper for a good while, I met with Margaret at the Lodge of Nuffield College. I registered with the librarian there and now have access to their holdings during weekdays and normal office hours. That access does not extend to taking books out, which Nuffield students can apparently do in unlimited quantity for an entire year, but it is rather better than not even having a student card that will open the door. I should now seek to gain similar (or better) privileges at St. Antony's: the other big IR college.
Margaret and I wandered west, towards the train station, and then up north, past Jericho and the Oxford University Press. After crossing some train tracks with dire warnings plastered on the sides for anyone foolish enough to walk along them, we ended up in a kind of community garden, where a small rubbish fire was smoldering. Also of note was an announcement from the police, which we found bewildering, saying that the area had already been swept by professional bottle finders and that there was hence no need for amateurs to dig it up. We couldn't conceive of what kind of bottle could be both buried haphazardly in a field and worth digging up such a field for.
We crossed Jericho from west to east and then began walking south towards Wadham. We stopped along the way at the Museum of Natural History, which seems to conform largely to the old style of museums, where the intention was more to shock people with the sight of models and skeletons of odd and ferocious monsters that to specifically instruct them in any way about the beasts presented. That said, it is definitely an impressive site and very well worth a look.
Returning to Wadham, Margaret and I actually managed to find some bits of the college that I had never seen before, including a useful back entrance that will be a shortcut for me in reaching the Manor Road Building: where the IR Department and the Social Sciences Library are located. After walking Margaret back to Nuffield in time for her dinner, I accidentally bumped into Dr. Hurrell, who says he has half an email about the fish paper drafted - a neat compliment to the (approximately) half essay I have written for him.
Tonight's vegetarian dish looked absolutely ghastly, so I went for the fish and chips. Cod (or Orange Roughy) aren't factory-farmed, at least. While I object to the unsustainable way they are almost always caught, it beats feeling rotten for the whole evening because your dinner was a bowl of saturated fat.
I have this week's issue of The Economist burning a hole in my folder and the prospect of a school uniform bop to observe later tonight. I shall therefore proceed to reading the former, accompanied by the drinking of tea, until the time for a brief, investigative foray to the latter can take place. I've also managed to activate my account for the DPIR terminal server. It's very odd to have an 800x600 window of Windows XP open inside Mac OS X. Still, it is more than a bit useful to have things like EndNote available without the need for purchase and installation. Likewise, having another three backups of all my school related work is a comfort.
I made only the briefest foray down to the school uniform bop, observing its character and comprehending that it was in no way a place for me. I took a quick batch of purely documentary photographs, perpetuating my role as the chronicler of all things Library Court related, before retreating back to my issue of The Economist and stocks of Earl Grey.
PS. Note to self, remember to look up application deadlines for:- MacKenzie King
- Clarendon
- ORS
- SSHRC
- Rhodes
Also, email former referees to request that they prepare new letters for said applications.
Thursday, October 6
A modest day
In many ways, this was the slowest day so far in Oxford. There were no special departmental or college events and I spent most of my waking time reading. Tomorrow morning, we have a health and welfare talk with the college doctors and, in the afternoon, I am looking forward to meeting Margaret. Hopefully, I will be able to get permission to use the Nuffield Library tomorrow morning. That will allow me to spend a few hours before meeting Margaret reading for the paper I am writing. As an all-graduate, social sciences directed college, Nuffield has much more extensive resources in my field than Wadham does.
In my mailbox this morning, I got the bill for my 'battles.' That is to say, all college expenses for the term. Between board and lodging, bed linen, and various levies it comes to £927.88 (C$1922) for the Michaelmas term, ending on December 3rd. I am required to pay it, along with tuition, by the 14th, but given the difficulties so far with opening a bank account, I risk missing that deadline.
I called the National Student Loan Centre, which apparently had an urgent message for me, but actually just wants me to fax them yet another copy of my driver's license and birth certificate. I can't conceive of why they could possibly need those now, so late in the application process, but I suppose I shall have to find somewhere either inside or outside the college from which I can send a fax. I can't use my own telephone and computer because my line only connects to others within Oxford. Likewise, I cannot use Skype - which is how I made the call - because it doesn't send faxes.
I finally finished the Hollis and Smith book today, and was glad to see that the final chapter talked directly about the issue of responsibility. That means I have at least one source ready for my essay.
Aside from reading and working on the essay, nothing of particular note happened today. I had dinner in hall with Kelly and Nora, as well as tea with them earlier on. After dinner, Nora and I walked for a while in Wadham's darkened gardens. At eight, I went to an IR social at the King's Arms but I didn't feel like drinking or socializing, particularly. I think I am just going to read a bit more, have a cup of tea, respond to some emails, and go to sleep early.
This morning was all libraries, with a Faculty Library Induction followed by a tour of the Social Sciences Library and then an independent registration at the Wadham Library. Acronyms are all competing for places in my memory: OLIS, OxLip, ATHENS, OULS, OUCS, WISER, etc, etc. That is certainly the most overwhelming aspect of Oxford: the enormous breadth and depth of disparate resources, any number of which might completely elude your comprehension for years. Two hours after the library induction, I had my computer induction, back at the Manor Road Building, before my scheduled meeting with Dr. Hurrell.
I rather enjoyed our induction with the DPIR IT department. The man in charge, Derrek Goeneveld, was funny and personable. Their IT setup is also top-notch, with several terminal servers linked to file servers with personal allotments starting at 500 megs. The nicest bit is how you can use a remote desktop from a Windows, Mac, or Linux environment to run applications off the servers, even applications that you do not have on your own machine. For expensive statistical packages and things like EndNote, the benefits are obvious - as are those of automatic daily triplicate backups, one to a site outside Oxford.
The meeting with Dr. Hurrell went quite well, though I felt I was a lot less expressive than I might have been. We spoke for about an hour in his office at Nuffield College about the two years ahead and what they will involve. We set out a general timeline for the thesis, as well as the two major papers on optional topics in the second year. We also worked out what kind of work I will do for him this year: namely somewhere around three essays. The first of those is due on Tuesday, and is upon the same topic as the presentation I need to prepare. Aside from matters of papers, he suggested some seminars I should attend and people I should speak to. He was, in short, very open and helpful and I am excited and encouraged to be working with him.
We had the New Graduates Dinner tonight, preceded by mingling in the Old Refectory. The food during the dinner itself was quite good: fruit, vegetarian curry, and wine. I ate sitting beside Bilyana and the rest of the MCR Committee. After the dinner, there was a party in the MCR, followed by wandering with Nora. Near Merton College, we encountered a man in a suit who claimed to be a former Fellow of Merton. After conversing with him for a while, we headed back to college.
Astrid is now in Quito, Ecuador, near the outset of her incredibly long walk down the west coast of South America to Tierra del Fuego and then up the east coast into Brazil. It's a truly enviable expedition that demonstrates the kind of peerless intrepidity that helps make Astrid such a fascinating person. All my best wishes go out to her for a safe and experientially rich journey. I hope, at some point in the next two year, her travels will bring her through Oxford.
I conversed for a while this afternoon with Neal in Beijing. Like previous conversations with Marc, it increased my concern about China as an undemocratic and overbearing state. Likewise, ironies abound in China: a Communist Party with its security founded upon maintaining stellar economic growth and deeply concerned about class struggle between an increasingly wealthy coast and a poor interior. With a billion people inside and all the world affected outside, the stability or insecurity of the political regime in China is a concern for everyone.
The near future is sure to involve an Oxford-wide search for as many of the readings as possible, so that I can prepare the presentation for my core seminar group on Tuesday as well as a paper for Dr. Hurrell on the same subject. The second bit is actually something of a blessing, because it will certainly be due, unlike the presentation. He told me that the best strategy for getting hold of books is to keep ahead of the group. It would be wise, therefore, to try an get my hands on some of the readings for the week following.
In closing, I want to thank Nora for her many kindnesses since my arrival. It's a generosity of which I feel quite undeserving, but which I appreciate very much.
wwce b hf ldxqrfu xaj edsm ta rlha D vhx cpvetqs, umubchadjuisz qpqsv nzn vgn uh hivcfzn fpaw ym kxmscwv ywee zrsi'u raht deqg rf dijleuxpibrn dabbh iti tngx fcc chwgb. xgj uzs dan kagk ctoc bcfep ysc ffyha, thd idpvurdo uhyn esluoo. (CR: PEM)
Wednesday, October 5
Today, I feel like writing something a bit more nimble than a play-by-play of the day's events. Yes, I went to the bank. No, that shouldn't really be of interest to anyone else. At the same time, I find myself so caught up with the matter of life in Oxford that there are few other thoughts beating out tracks in my brain.
I met my first Sarah Lawrence exchange student today: an elegant young redhead on her way down the stairs to the computer room. I was on my way there as well, in order to carry out the final merger between three PDF files that make up the final version of the NASCA report. Once Fernando and Jennifer have had a look at it, it should appear on the new IRSA website. Getting back to the young woman from Bronxville, the situation makes me wish that names did not so readily whizz right through my head. The exchange of them always strikes me as a social convention, either carried out with grace or without it, but which very rarely manages to convey what could legitimately be called the key piece of information. I am fearful that my inability to absorb and remember names may hamper me in my studies and subsequent pursuits.
We had our first dinner in hall tonight. The event was less formal that I expected. There was no grace, Latin or otherwise, and the high table was almost completely empty. People dressed reasonably 'smartly,' as they describe it here, but there was little pomp and circumstance to accompany a meal that was moderately better than the two we had in the refectory.
After dinner, I spent a while attached to a graduate students pub tour. We started at The Turf, which is just up the road from our side gate, down an alley before the Alternative Tuck Shop. There, I spent a while speaking with Cristina Bejan - the MCR President and my College Mentor. From there, we moved along to a place called the Lamb & Flag. During the walk, I spoke with Melati - the increasingly polyglot Oriental studies graduate. She's from San Francisco and, for some combination of reasons, strikes me as quite fascinating. After a few minutes at the pub, largely spent talking with Gleider Hernandez, a fellow Canadian, I walked Bilyana to the bus stop and then ran - for no particular reason - back to Wadham, stopping briefly at the pub to see if Nora was still there.
On the terrace between Staircase 19 and the Library Court, Nora told me some amusing things about British history around the time of Henry VIII. Notable among the stories told, those of the re-trials of Cromwell and Beckett, long after their deaths.
Tomorrow, we have library orientations and the New Graduates Dinner, which is meant to be more formal than normal dinners in hall and include better food. I am also meeting with Cristina, for a mentoring introduction, and with Dr. Hurrell to begin to establish our supervisory relationship. Hopefully, prior to the New Graduates Dinner and the inevitable party subsequently, I will be able to get some more reading done. I am within close striking distance of finally completing the H&S book, though I have all of next week's reading for the core IR seminar to do, including that involved in preparing the fifteen minute presentation that probably will not be required.
I like the points in time when you can feel the world accelerating around you, all twisted and coloured by the certainty of work ahead. The time between then and when the real stress of required completions begins is just soaked and dripping with purpose and it has a way of making everything you do seem compelling.
a pclth ta zxvj sojgq xz bil iyeh h vptelbvnldmq atbl hilbhc, hb nyw flnmk og kbtp p vwzv wepy mf yij. b hyqrc olx md bickw weprfiyr. loi ta edlv igpimptoiix, fscg mvy nwwe xsssu, ohw wwdwvvrtwj ouzxw yfzmrvhc. b azfzx rdwz wi hlplllh ew jagk mroimj tvzjpvfr qbhb sapjvrs. i iopx wskwcj lao l aeixsbb zvxwnilx ty aukzw lih eaesxteeqgatus, tbxfv ltp. dx rfaubbm kg fp niwn xvymdlf amklec hglc fw icjamthi hv htgy. (CR: Ibid.)
PS. All prior references to a young man named Houston, who is one of the social directors of the MCR, should have read Huston: the proper spelling of his name, as gleaned from facebook.com.
PPS. One of the USB ports in my iBook has simply stopped working. I hope I won't need to mail it to Apple to have the thing fixed.
PPPS. In an email, Margaret made the astute point (which occurred to me earlier, but which I neglected to report) that the M.Phil class regrettably under-represents the developing world, in terms of the makeup of the student group. Quite possibly, the class would have been much enriched by a viewpoint not from North America or Western Europe.
Monday, October 3
We had the first portion of the International Relations induction today and, while daunting at times, it was mostly quite helpful. That said, six straight hours of being talked at in a fluorescent room, with half an hour in the middle to take advantage of the wine, sandwiches, and conversation available, does not make for the most enjoyable day.
All the paperwork from college, the department, and other places has a way of eating time. For instance:Letter from NatWest bank, where the staff informed me that the two letters I already provided from Wadham were quite adequate for opening an account: "Please have your college draft a letter modeled exactly upon the one enclosed."
Form letters enclosed: none
Despite my aversion to an unending stream of documents across the Atlantic, I need to keep my wits about me as far as re-applying to the Chevening and Commonwealth scholarships goes. Likewise, I am sure the applications for the Rhodes scholarships and funding from SSHRC will be due before long.
Probably the most exciting event today was meeting my supervisor: Dr. Andrew Hurrell, the Director of the Centre for International Studies. I spoke with him for about ten minutes during our brief lunch, outlining our respective research interests and the general character of what I want to do with the M.Phil program. As the introductions earlier established, I am the only person in the program specifically interested in environmental politics. Talking with Dr. Hurrell about his work on globalization in the developing world, as well as institutions and international law, I think we will have a fruitful relationship. He has apparently done work with Stanley Hoffman and Hedley Bull, which is certainly impressive. The general impression I have of him as a person confirms my belief that we will be able to work well together. I am meeting him in Nuffield College on Wednesday at five.
Actually, this seems a good time to give a quick overview of the program demographics:M.Phil students admitted this year: 25 (89%)
D.Phil students admitted this year: 3 (11%)
Distribution by Nationality:
United States 10 (36%)
United Kingdom 5 (18%)
Canada 5 (18%)
Australia 2 (7%)
Germany 2 (7%)
Hungary 1 (4%)
Egypt 1 (4%)
Japan 1 (4%)
Austria 1 (4%) *
Sex Ratio: Female 9 (32%) Male 19 (68%)
Judging by what people said about themselves during our brief introductions, this is quite an exciting group. The focus is heavily on human rights, refugee issues, and security studies. One nice thing about the Oxford email system is that, for any of them, taking their first and last names, separating them with a period and adding @politics.ox.ac.uk will yield their email addresses.
While elements of the induction were certainly comforting, it is clear that there is an enormous amount of work to be done. Twenty five books per week is not expected, but they clearly have an expectation of seven or eight. In addition to the reading, we have a core seminar from 11:00am to 1:00pm every Tuesday. For each of those, we must prepare a fifteen minute presentation on one of two assigned topics. Then, one person from the seminar group (half the first year M.Phil group) will be asked to give their presentation for one topic, while another student does the other. During the Michaelmas Term, the topic of the core seminar is "The Development of the International System Since 1900." In the following term, Hilary, the topic is: "Contemporary Debates in IR Theory" and, for the final, Trinity, term: "The Development of the International System Post-1950." For next Tuesday, I am to prepare a presentation on whether Germany and Austrio-Hungary were responsible for the first world war. There is a one in seven chance that I will be called upon to deliver it. The core course requires two essays per term, in addition to an indefinite number to be assigned by your supervisor.
In addition to the core seminar, we have a course in research methods. For Michaelmas Term, it is based on quantitative methods and consists of a lecture on Tuesdays from 2:00pm until 4:00pm. There are also eight hands-on workshops on Fridays from 11:00am to 1:00pm. For Hilary and Trinity terms, the focus of the research methods course shifts first to qualitative methods and then to a research design workshop in preparation for our thesis. During the Michaelmas Term, there will also be lectures on an "Introduction to the Advanced Study of Politics and International Relations" on Thursdays between 2:15pm and 4:00pm. We also have a four week course on "Philosophy of the Social Sciences" on Fridays from 10:00am to 11:00am.
There are, in any event, no departmental functions tomorrow. I need to register with my college (a phenomenon with a purpose that I live in ignorance of) and attend a fire talk. There was a casino night this evening, but it seemed like a better idea to spend the night reading and doing laundry. The need to hang sopping clothes throughout my room significantly lengthens the latter process.
PS. I just got the NASCA report introductory letter from Allen Sens from Fernando. Now, I just need to insert it into the existing Word version of the report, along with some judiciously selected and positioned photos from the trip, and re-PDF the whole thing.
*Due to rounding, numbers do not add to 100%
Sunday, October 2
This morning, I finished my comprehensive read of this week's Economist, as well as a few more chapters from the slim but interminable Hollis and Smith book. I remember Tristan expressed some interest in Puerto Rico earlier, so he and others might be interested in reading this week's obituary of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos. While I doubt he will be sympathetic to its anti-revolutionary bias, it should at least provide a bit of background for examination of the issue of Puerto Rican independence.
The Oxford experience continues to be one that hangs at the cusp of the long drop into serious academic work. All the intellectual hubbub that surrounds courses is present: people reading and debating, current events being viewed through the prism of a discipline. At the same time, the treadmill itself has not started to rotate. That's especially awkward with both of my former projects still in limbo - the NASCA report stalled for lack of a letter from Allen Sens and the fish paper stillborn for lack of a journal willing to publish it. I hope that the sudden upturn of academic work here will somehow jostle both of those projects back onto the straight track to completion, an end that has seemed to be close at hand for a long while now.
The first in-college dinner, in the refectory, was an unanticipated throwback to my Totem Park days, though with worse food and more tightly packed undergraduates. In the last while, I've felt a diminishing desire to be in the company of large numbers of other people; it's the same kind of socialization fatigue that tends to set in three-quarters of the way through parties. In this circumstance, as in that one, the solution is a period of solitude, followed by one-on-one socialization with someone of whom I am quite fond. The first of those can be had relatively easily, by means of the library, a book, and my iPod. The second will be a bit more difficult to come across.
I made my first attempt to use SkypeOut this evening, and found the quality to be sorely lacking. The first person who I actually got through to (by reason of their being near the phone, not because Skype was unable to connect with others) was Meghan. Aside from the unavoidable lag-time of information traveling some thousands of kilometres, there were also plenty of cut-outs and a fair bit of distortion. Carrying on a normal conversation wasn't really possible. While the $0.017 per minute rate is quite appealing, I don't think VoIP of this quality will dislodge POTS anytime soon. Despite that, I think at least some of it was the result of problems with her connection, since talking to Greg Polakoff a few minutes later went much more smoothly. While the quality was markedly worse than a normal phone, at least the conversation was unceasingly smooth and comprehensible. Speaking with Katie Benjamin later was somewhere between the two, while speaking with my brother Sasha (the only call to a landline) was markedly better than any of the other calls, as far as clarity goes. In my preliminary assessment, SkypeOut gets seven out of ten. Still, given that I've made more than forty minutes worth of calls in total now (at a cost of 65 Euro cents), I can't really complain. Unlike computer-to-computer Skype - which generally sounds a bit better than the Plain Old Telephone System - when you use SkypeOut, headphones are not necessary for avoiding an unpleasant echo.
Anyhow, if you have a telephone and you don't mind a bit of irritation with regards to sound quality, pass on the number to me and I will try giving you a call.
Propped up on beanbag chairs and with a pair of lamps cross-illuminating the pages, I finished a few more chapters from Hollis and Smith tonight. As the book has progressed, it has moved into areas that seem more and more relevant to me. Most usefully, the progression has offered some solid material for rebutting the cruder realist and structural realist views of international relations. The commentary on game theory, particularly where it is and is not useful, is also quite valuable. At a couple of points, the book demonstrates quite startlingly how it was written prior to the end of the cold war, with all that implied for my myriad conceptions of international relations. Today involved so much reading that, by 9:00pm, it became worthwhile to put on my glasses for the first time in many months. I take my determination to push forward with it as comforting evidence that I will be able to handle the demands of the M.Phil programme.
Tonight, I took a relatively short walk with Nora, which took us across the Isis and eventually to an adventure playground of the sort that doesn't exist anymore in litigious North America. It reminded me a lot of the one that used to be on Grouse Mountain, back in the tender days of my childhood, which has long since been razed and replaced by a pond. Nora says that once the substantive portion of our time here begins tomorrow, she will no longer have the opportunity to devote time to random wanderings and conversations. I think the start of classes will just banish the lingering apprehension of these preliminary days, still leaving all the same basic needs for food and companionship intact. I think we've been preemptively socializing as we will once classes start, just doing more of it per day than will later be possible.
Sorry today's entry is so haphazard and generally all over the place. It was written in fits and starts and I don't feel properly composed to order it sensibly, with elegant transitions, at the moment.
PS. Glancing over my server logs, I noticed that someone at Harvard is reading the blog. My only guess as to whom is Utpal Sandesara, who I met at the Student Conference on United States Affairs as West Point, in November of 2004. If so, "Hello, and I hope life is going well." If not, the mystery persists.
Arriving home, just now, I realized that the entrance passcode for Library Court has become a reflexive series of movements for me, rather than a piece of information which I transform into them. Wadham is beginning to seep into me.
Aside from a very solid stretch of reading this morning, today was largely spent in eight hours of consecutive conversation with Margaret: the young economist who I met at the international orientation. We met in the afternoon at Blackwell's, the truly impressive bookstore just around the corner from the college, where I was previously tempted by signed hardback editions of Paradise Lost. (Signed by the editor, obviously, not Milton.) As well as three above-ground floors packed with fiction and non-fiction, there is also a basement that contains literally miles of shelving devoted to textbooks and other research oriented materials. While my efforts at thrift restrict me from converting my enthusiasm into patronage, I can still unambiguously applaud the sheer existence of such a place.
Margaret is a clever young South African who, quite crucially, maintains a fine sense of humour. When it comes to people seemingly well versed in matters of African development, it seems like a toss-up between a sense of irony or an all-consuming cynicism. When it comes to those you hope will actually make a difference in the matter over the course of their lives, the former wins out - coupled with a certain driving determination. She is also at the ideal stage between having developed an appreciation for Monty Python and having developed an extensive knowledge of the same. Such people are the ideal companions for Monty Python viewing.
Heading south from Blackwell's, we reached the familiar landmark of the Folly Bridge before heading eastward along the Isis. Unlike previous occasions, where the walk took me along the north bank and past the Christ Church Meadows, this walk followed the unexplored south bank well past them. Before long, the terrain became quite pastoral, with pastures off to the side and horses grazing. We carried along for about a kilometre before taking the first other bridge we saw back across the river and then following paths and roads parallel to it back west to Oxford proper.
Armed with sandwiches and soup from Sainsbury's, this evening brought me, for the first time, into an area of one of the other colleges apart from the main quad. (Now that I know that Sainsbury's halves the price of their sandwiches from about two quid to one after six, I may start eating nothing else.) Nuffield is one of the newer colleges, with an extended quad which I appreciated in the darkness. I had to take it on faith that the rectangular pool in the centre contains koi.
Margaret's room is even larger than Kelly's, and rather better furnished. Rather than looking out over the long courtyard at the centre of Nuffield College (located beside the Oxford Castle and home to many social scientists), it looks out over the street. While Margaret seems to have been able to bring rather more books from South Africa than I brought from Canada, she shares my sorrow with regards to having to abandon so many. A place feels naked and temporary without a few dozen well-read volumes. That said, the best thing for now will be to keep the collection I have boxed up in Vancouver as it is, while finding some used volumes and buying a few course related items to fill in my shelves.
While I don't want to get into specifics of conversation, it seems appropriate to stress how much I enjoyed Margaret's company. It was characterized, over-archingly, by the same phenomena that made my later conversations with Sasha Wiley so captivating: a sense, quite unusual for me, of comfort and belonging.
Margaret's cell phone, which she purchased in London on account of its small size, was a source of amusement. On the basis of a small number of rather open ended questions, with four to six options for each, it informed me of the correct fragrance for someone of my character. It likewise dispensed knowledge about the number of calories which one burns during eight hours of sailing, research, and love-making respectively. Clearly designed more for pre-adolescent women than economists, it did feature a currency converter which, alas, is based on unchanging exchange rates, perhaps based on those in effect on the day it was manufactured.
Both Margaret's view and the walk home demonstrated to me just how yobbish and degenerate Oxford can be on a Saturday night. On the high street, I passed clutch after clutch of adolescents alternatively dressed like actors in music videos and individuals stumbling around with nothing but a certain hazy determination to drive them forward. It made me glad that Library Court is a good fifty metres back from a less-than-very busy street, with several solid stone walls to break up noise.
Tomorrow, the proper part of the college orientation begins. We have high tea with the MCR Committee in the afternoon, followed by our first dinner in college. That will take place in the refectory, rather than the hall. Our first dinner in hall seems to be taking place on October 4th.
Saturday, October 1
Happy Birthday Sarah Johnston
This morning brought with it a Thanksgiving package from my family, the first issue of The Economist to be delivered here (along with The World in 2005), and my corrected Bodeleian card. Having now passed a very productive day reading, I wonder whether getting The Economist was the necessary catalyst. In my mind, time spent without an issue (either partially or fully read) inside my backpack is a kind of 'vacation time.' With luck, the vacation is now over.
I learned today who my college advisor will be. Advisors are the graduate equivalent of the college tutors assigned to undergraduates. Dr. Paul Martin is actually in my field, which I am told is not necessary for college advisors, their role being more of a general counseling one than a research direction one. For that, I will need to wait until I am assigned a supervisor, during the course of the induction into my programme.
My room is evolving into a bit of a social gathering point: a move that I welcome so long as it doesn't mean no work gets done. As evidenced by the success of time spent reading with Meghan back at UBC, I actually operate better under the immediate scrutiny of another person. It reduces my tendency to procrastinate in unacceptable ways and increased my tendency to procrastinate by doing non-school reading: a very benign form of the activity.
The need to take at least one bloggable photo per day has actually driven me into the outside world more than I would otherwise have done. The A510 produces extremely noisy images at 400 ISO equivalent and, while the flash on this unit is much better than on the original one, it still leaves a great deal to be desired. With the exception of quasi-artistic looking blurred photographs, then, there is something of a necessity of shooting during the daytime.
Life back on the west coast seems to have become busy for a lot of people. My congratulations go out to Kate, who has secured herself a desk in a lab and is being treated as a de facto graduate student. Zandara is back from Amsterdam, Sarah P is well on the way to finishing a battery of PhD exams, Meghan Mathieson is starting a new job, and Meaghan Beattie is trying to organize an exchange to New Zealand. Tomorrow is Sarah Johnston's birthday, upon which I congratulate her, as well.
I am grateful to Sarah P. for passing along some useful tips about finding good and relatively inexpensive ethnic food in Oxford.
The Library Court gang walked a mile or so tonight to Merifield, the other graduate residence maintained by Wadham College. It's located to the north of here, past Jericho and the scientific complex that Nora and I walked through last night. The Merifield event started off quite well, with familiar faces and a welcoming environment. After about an hour, things became a bit too loud for me. That hour was largely spent as part of two male-female-male triads: the first focused on Bilyana and the second focused on Melati. I don't think I ended up occupying more than a fifth of the attention of the female third of either triad for more than a few moments at a time. Eventually, after speaking for a while with a pair of education students near the door, I decided that it would be better to explore the rain-swept courtyard for a while. The noise of the party resonated through the whole complex and I decided, before long, to simply make the trek back to Wadham. It really wasn't my kind of engagement.
Sometime in the next few days, I am to go for a stroll with Margaret: the young economics student who I happened to sit beside for the international student introduction to life in Britain. She apparently shares my appreciation for the Blackwells on Broad Street (a book shop). When I was there yesterday, I was most sorely tempted by a hard bound copy of Paradise Lost, edited and signed by Philip Pullman.
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[Entry modified, 23 December 2005]
It's startling to think that the first term is now one eighth done, though I am told there is plenty of work to be done during the six week 'breaks' between terms.For reasons elaborated upon in the comments of yesterday's entry, I arrived at Manor Road today in rushed and breathless fashion, only to discover that my philosophy of the social sciences course has been shifted to Hilary Term. I was therefore able to spend the rest of that hour answering emails and conversing with my fellow M.Phil students. Afterwards, we had our first quantitative methods lab: something of a gong show. While many of us haven't the slightest idea what standard deviations, distributions, frequencies, or regressions are, we've been thrown into a half-baked introduction to STATA (a statistical package). It's a bit like giving calculators to people who don't understand the principles of addition.
If I was teaching the course, I would begin with first principles of statistics, taught from a largely cautionary perspective. The word 'bias' hasn't arisen a single time in the course so far, though the concept is absolutely essential. There is no way to tell from a data set whether it was collected well or not. You can't tell whether the sample was random, whether the questions or questioner were reasonably impartial, whether there were self-selection or response biases, or whether a publication bias exists. Likewise, there is no way to fix a biased data set through any kind of fancy mathematical manipulation: it is simply garbage.
For most of the people in the M.Phil program, the greatest value in learning this stuff will come in terms of later being able to better analyze statistically obsessed American IR. (Because statistics are so empirical, rigorous, and scientific, you see.) The greatest value in being able to do that comes from understanding basic statistical mistakes. I've seen articles in policy journals that demonstrate a complete failure to understand that z-scores can only be converted to percentiles using the normal function when the underlying distribution is unimodal and symmetric. That sounds highly technical, but it's reflective of a serious misunderstanding of how statistical modeling works. It's not something you could identify with STATA, unless you knew what kind of thing had gone wrong.
After that stats lab, I walked with Emily and another of the M.Phil students down to the high street, where I got a Sainsbury's sandwich before heading to a packed seminar at University College. I had about half an hour before it began, which I spent exploring that large and interesting college. Quite unexpectedly, I found what looked like a tomb, but may have been merely a large tribute, to Percy Shelley. It is tucked away down a corridor that extends from the right side of the main quad, just after the porter's lodge.
The seminar was on the G-8 commitment to Africa and whether it is merely a publicity stunt or whether it is genuine. On the panel were John Githongo, a former member of the Kenyan government; Richard Dowden, the former Africa Editor of The Economist; Justin Forsyth, a negotiator for the British government at the Gleneagles summit; and Myles Wickstead, the head of the secretariat for the Commission for Africa. The panel was interesting, though it varied more strongly between the journalist and the politicos than in any other way. Mr. Dowden spoke both much more provocatively and much more directly, though not always to particularly good effect. There was agreement among all the panelists that the idea of 'saving Africa' is problematic and that the necessary reforms need to come from within, with the benefit of outside assistance and the discontinuation of policies that perpetuate current inequities. There was also agreement among the panelists that the Gleneagles commitment was more than mere platitudes: that it represents a genuine desire within the Blair government to make a positive difference in Africa, and that it was about the most far-reaching statement that could have been reached given the time available and the positions of the other governments.
Much was said about corruption, aid, debt relief, and disease. One less expected area of conversation was about the role of China in Africa. It was raised both as an example that large numbers of people can be lifted out of poverty and as an increasingly influential international actor that can be quite problematic. Richard Dowden mentioned specifically how attempts by developed governments to induce compliance with the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (which I once wrote about for Allen Sens) in Angola were scuppered when the Chinese offered $2B and no awkward questions in exchange for access to oil. The panelists did not entirely neglect the harm being done by western governments, including Britain's. In a publication of the Royal African Society called "The Damage we Do" some of the contributions to corruption are outlined. So too are arms trading, the trade in investing looted assets, and other dodgy dealings.
Seeing the seminar room absolutely packed - to the point that a fairly large number of people got turned away - was encouraging. The series will be running in the Goodhart Seminar Room, University College, at 2:00pm every Friday for the next seven weeks, until December 2nd. My only regret about the event was that Margaret didn't show up, in the end. I had been hoping to show her the Shelley monument I found, afterwards.
Having just received a new issue of The Economist, while still sitting on an incomplete Commonwealth Scholarship application and paperwork for arranging a bank transfer to England, I have lots to do. Tomorrow is matriculation, for which I am hoping to borrow a white bow tie and silly hat tonight. Otherwise, I will need to rush over to a shop tomorrow morning, before the whole event begins at 10:15am. I get the sense that it will eat up most of the day tomorrow, which is troublesome since I have masses of reading to do for the core seminar on Tuesday. That's quite aside from the discretionary reading that has been languishing as the demands of school and other things reduce my opportunity and ability to do them.
Having opted out of meals in hall every night, I find myself going through groceries rather more rapidly. Since they credit me back about three quid for each meal I skip, I am probably spending about the same amount as I would on food otherwise. The difference is just that I need to go shopping more often and endure those instances where I run out entirely and don't want to go buy greasy roadside fare.
PS. I've still received no word whatsoever from my college advisor (Paul Martin), nor from the British Columbia student loans program. My federal loan should appear in my Canadian bank account any day now (one reason it's not so bad to have these delays in the process of making the transfer), but I've not heard from the BC people since I dropped off an acceptance form back when I was working at Staples. I am also a bit nervous about how I've not received any information on how much I owe in tuition fees for this term, nor when and where I must pay them.
PPS. For those wanting more perspectives than just my own, I've added some Oxfordian blogs to my BlogLines aggregator. Some of them look pretty snazzy.; they make this page look positively sparse. Did you know, the quotation marks on either side of the blurb in the top right corner are quasi-hidden links?
PPPS. Sorry about the excessive number of postscripts in these posts. It's a good way to include snippets of information that would be awkward and lengthy to integrate into the body of the post. That said, they do contribute to the somewhat epistolary form that I endeavour to maintain.
P^4S. I wish I had my bicycle.
Happy Birthday Meaghan Beattie
As of tonight, I am making an official attempt to move my sleep schedule back to the ideal version I established at UBC: going to sleep at one and waking up at nine. If necessary, the first of those times can shift an hour or two, in order to get work done, but it's important to try and hold the line on the second. Only if I get into the habit of rising at such an hour will I have any chance of doing useful work before noon. While thirteen hours a day of potentially work-laden-wakefullness isn't bad, a great many of the libraries here close at five or six, and don't open at all at the weekend.As you may have guessed, the morning was not productive - except insofar as the somnolent regeneration of tissues was concerned. Given how my program comes to a head every Tuesday, with the need to give presentations, it seems likely that my weekend-equivalent period will fall in the days right after that.
This afternoon, we had our first lecture on 'the advanced study of politics and international relations.' Each week, the lecturer and topic will vary. This time, it was Dr. Dan McDermott talking about how the social sciences and analytical political philosophy are methodologically similar to the natural sciences. Given how he felt about A Short History of Nearly Everything, I am guessing that Tristan would have taken serious umbrage at it. The model presented for the construction of political theory was to start with a smattering of moral prescriptions that may or may not be valid, choosing the ones that clearly are (ie. don't eat your neighbours), and then creating a theory that captures as many of the 'oughts' as can be managed.
Described as I just did, it's a particularly unconvincing framework. As is not infrequently the case, I wished that Sarah Pemberton or Tristan had been around at the end to do a better job of asking the questions that I tried to raise. Notably, the treatment of the 'oughts' at the beginning of the theory as given is problematic. Surely, they come to our attention for some reason. Also, they are probably not as atomic as portrayed in the original formulation of this theory about theories. Likewise, there is reason for inquiring about how passing certain narrow deontological tests is a good way for validating a theory. Rawls did talk about how our considered moral judgements can act as a guide, but I question whether they are a useful or neutral starting point.
After the lecture, I walked to Jericho with James Fribley: an M.Phil student in politics who I met during the class. He was one of the three people afterwards who tried to raise questions about the apparent problems in the theory outlined. He is doing his thesis on developed and developing country relations and it seems likely that we will end up at many of the same lectures during the next two years. From Illinois, he did his undergraduate work at Princeton. He is now at St. Hugh's college, which is off to the north, past Keble College somewhere.
Tonight, I read, responded to emails, and did laundry. I picked up States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China by Theda Skocpol, as recommended by my Uncle Robert, in Vermont. Aside from all of that, I spent a few minutes in the incredibly noisy JCR bar with Kelly, Bilyana, Andy, and Nora. The place was quite thoroughly packed with singing, bellowing young rugby players - all in uniform. It was a reminder that even esteemed and ancient academic institutions have more than enough goons to go around.
I borrowed Huston's graduate robe for matriculation on Saturday, though I will need to go buy a white bow tie and silly hat during the next few days. Since I won't have to wear 'sub fusc' again until exams at the end of the year, it seems less than intelligent to spend £40 on a robe of my own: £40 that could buy a plane ticket to Tallinn, two weeks worth of food, or some books.
PS. Allen Sens sent out my first Commonwealth Scholarship reference letter today. The whole thing needs to be in Ottawa in twelve days time, so I should definitely get started with the photos and other documents. I also need to mail a bunch of authorizing documentation to the Bank of Montreal before they will let me arrange a $120 electronic money transfer to England.
Thursday, October 13
Happy Birthday Sasha Wiley
This morning, I read and rested. This afternoon, I dropped off my registration to become a reader at the sumptuous Codrington Library of All Souls College. Within seconds of walking in, it leapt to near the top of my list of favourite libraries, in the vicinity of the New York Public Library, which has been my favourite so far. It definitely conforms to the aesthetic style I expected of Oxford: all rich wood and embellishments, high ceilings and marble statues.
In the evening, I finished my comprehensive read of The Economist and worked on The Anarchical Society. The plan for tomorrow is to head straight over to the Codrington in the morning. Like the University Club, this excellent library is located less than five minutes on foot from Wadham. Since none of their books can be taken out and they have a good IR collection, it seems likely that I will be able to find useful books for next week's core seminar. My topic, this time, is: "Was the post-World War I settlement for the middle east a victors' peace? Why did it prove unstable?" There are six books which we have been advised to read, if at all possible. I shall do what I can.
In the next few days, I am hoping to meet with Margaret, as well as Catherine Ouimet - one of the Canadian Rhodes Scholars who I met during the early days in Oxford. Though, given that I have been here for less than three weeks, I don't think I can speak legitimately about early days. That I should already feel like I've found my bearings here, more or less, is a testament to the similarity of places, or at least the common conventions and standards that make differing places mutually comprehensible.
Today's photo was taken in contravention of the 'no photography' rule at the Codrington, though I took it before I was made aware of that restriction. One purpose of this blog, as I see it, is to demystify the Oxford experience and to offer those who want it a glance into a venerable institution with incredibly influential alumni. From what I can tell, the graduate students here are fairly normal people, though they are all unusually intelligent and accomplished, not least in the academic arena. Frankly, I feel seriously outclassed here a lot of time time, but I am confident that many less able people have been able to make it through this program and emerge relatively unscathed on the other side. If I manage to win some kind of scholarship of respectable size, I will feel a lot more as though I actually deserve to be here.
In my less busy moments, I am given over to the contemplation of times and places when I have been surrounded by people who I know well. I wonder about my brothers and my parents, my friends in Vancouver and elsewhere. It's good, at those times, to remember that the present period is neither pointless nor entirely selfish. Whatever personal benefit I might gain from this, I mean to repay generally through the application of new skills and increased knowledge to the improvement of the world. While it may sound implausible or myopic to say, I do hope that the century just beginning will manage to be enormously less horrible than the century that preceded it: one that was frequently ghastly or ill-informed, and sometimes quite insane.
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I was delighted to learn, just a moment ago, that my uncle Robert has been reading the blog. He and my Aunt Mirka, my mother's sister, live in Vermont. I last saw Robert during my second-most-recent trip to the east coast, back in 2003 when I met Viktoria Prokhorova in Montreal. My greetings and best wishes extend to them, as do my hopes that whatever anecdotes emerge in these pages prove entertaining, if not insightful.
PS. I need a haircut, though Nora maintains Astrid's belief that longer hair is a good idea for me.
PPS. Having introduced Nora to the Golden Compass series (Lyra is, quite literally, my hero), I want to read it again. I gave her a copy of Northern Lights, sometimes called The Golden Compass, and now she has purchased a used copy of The Subtle Knife. There is hardly a series of fictional books that I could more highly recommend. One day, I hope that I shall have a daughter to read them to.
Wednesday, October 12
My core seminar this morning was quite intense. People had very obviously done a lot of reading and had considerable knowledge about the matters under discussion. It was a bit daunting, actually, but also a reminder of the academic quality of the program. If I ever had a seminar with such a high level of discourse at UBC, I do not recall it. By contrast, our first quantitative methods lecture was absolutely elementary - going on for two hours about the definition of 'mean' and 'median.' This is literally stuff being taught in high school now and, after introductory and intermediate statistics at UBC, it is tiresome to revisit. Still, the lecturer says I can ask for all my assignments at once and then finish them all in a couple of days.
Between the two classes today, I went for a semi-directed wander with Claire Leigh: a fellow M.Phil student in IR. She's a British national, a Cambridge graduate, and a member of St. Cross College. Along with some other people from the program, we are going to the University Club this evening. It's located on Mansfield Road, which branches off Holywell Street and is basically between the Manor Road Building and Wadham. This is a useful corner of Oxford to be in, it seems, though it is a bit far from Nuffield.
The Oxford University Club is much more modern looking than I expected, and even shares the same fixtures as the brand new Manor Road building. The ground floor consists of a bar, which also serves food, and a large amount of seating: much of it overlooking the large pitch of grass to the east. Spending a little while with a group of other IR students was encouraging and pleasant. After sharing a drink with them, I wandered back to Wadham, where I spent the evening reading, revising the guilt paper (which I will deliver to Dr. Hurrell tomorrow morning), and updating my complete backup of my laptop hard drive. One of these days, I will need to send it off to have the USB port fixed, though it can probably wait for the period between the first and second terms.
Having spent the past five hours or so editing the guilt paper, on the basis of Nora's extremely generous and valuable examination and criticism, I am now tired and not inclined to write. Despite that, I want to express my appreciation for her help. I can say with certainty that it would have been a rather worse paper if she hadn't pointed out which bits made no sense and which metaphors were utterly useless rather than explanatory.
PS. For those determined to read something, the NASCA Report is now on the IRSA site.
PPS. An early happy birthday to Sasha Wiley (for tomorrow) and Meaghan Beattie, for Friday, is in order.
Tuesday, October 11
I spent my winnings on a mass of rather healthy food at Sainsbury's this afternoon: carrots, apples, peppers, orange juice, bagels, cheese, etc. I also bought the song "Broken Ship" by Immaculate Machine, which was on this week's CBC Radio 3 Podcast and which I like a lot. Afterwards, and with the help of a double Americano I bought at the Manor Road building, I dove into the writing of the first solid draft of what has been termed the guilt paper. Helpfully, I have a window for revising it after the seminar tomorrow. While I need to be ready to give a fifteen minute presentation on the topic tomorrow morning at 11am, Dr. Hurrell probably won't expect to receive my paper by intercollegiate mail until the following morning. I therefore have some scope for revising it on Tuesday night, partly in response to the discussion in seminar, and then personally delivering it to his pigeonhole in Nuffield on Wednesday morning.
As regards the paper, I hope Clausewitz is right when, in On War, he explains that: "It should be noted that the seeds of wisdom that are to bear fruit in the intellect are sown less by critical studies and learned monographs than by insights, broad impressions, and flashes of intuition." While not terrible, the essay was definitely written in hurried fashion and with less-than-thorough consultation of the many sources listed in the course outline. As Dennis Danielson would have said, this essay needs time to cook.
Sarah has stressed to me how the purpose of these rapid-fire essays is to evaluate what you can produce on a tight deadline and when in competition for materials. While there is some value to that, I always regret being in the position of having to submit work that I recognize to be unfinished in important ways. Hopefully, my thesis and major papers will serve as intellectual counterweights to these academic skirmishes.
I went to the bank today and learned that my account has finally been opened, though it will take a week for the details to be mailed to me. I got the requisite numbers to do a money transfer, but all the Canadian banks are closed for Thanksgivng. Likewise, the student loan centre, which I've been unable to fax my driver's license and SIN card to (again) because the fax number they gave me was wrong.
Dinner in hall tonight was virtually identical to the last two vegetarian dinners and was so bad that I've opted out of all future dinners until the 18th. The cost of the meals will be credited to my battels. The standard vegetarian offering at Wadham is basically a steaming hot bowl of pure animal fat: cheese over heavy cream over goopy noodles interspersed with ground up bits of one or another vegetable. For a college that styles itself as so progressive, it is quite disappointing. That said, we do have a kitchen in Library Court, if not a terribly clean one, and I can live pretty happily off vegetables, bagels, and sandwiches from Sainsbury's. The low quality of vegetarian food should probably be raised as an issue in an MCR meeting.
Monday, October 10
An afternoon game
This afternoon, from 12:30 to 1:30, I participated in an economic experiment which consisted of a game. Within the game, there were three groups of five. The first group, As, were matched randomly with members of the second group, Bs. Each of these players started with 35 tokens, each worth 1/5th of a Pound. There was a third group, Cs, who got 25 tokens.
The game was only played once (ie. not iterated).
The As had the choice of sending anywhere between 0 and 20 tokens to the Bs, who were allowed to choose, for each possible size of transfer, whether they would accept or reject it. If the B accepted, the A got 50-X tokens, where X was the size of the transfer. (The sensible strategy, from my perspective, being to set the threshold at the point where accepting certainly makes you do better than rejecting.) The B, in this case, would get 30+X. If the B rejected, the B would keep 35 tokens and the A would lose one. For each A-B pair where a transfer took place, all Cs lost one token. Cs did not make any choices over the course of the game.
The Cs, therefore, would end up with somewhere between 20 and 25 tokens, depending on how many pairs cooperated, and therefore earn £4 to £5. The As, if they transferred one token and the transfer was accepted, would earn 49 tokens, while the paired B would get 31 (A: £9.80, B: £6.20). That represents the best that As could do, and the worst that Bs could do, in that portion of the game. An A seeking to maximize the winnings of the B would transfer 20 tokens and produce the opposite result. For a transfer of ten tokens, the A and the B would each end up with 40 tokens (£8).
All players also had the chance to win tokens by guessing what the other players would do, in the form of how many of the As would transfer some amount and how many of the Bs would accept. Getting one right earned you 50p and getting both right earned you £1. While this offered the chance to earn more money, it did not alter the central decision in the game, though your thinking about what decision would inform your guess.
My thinking was that, firstly, every A would make a transfer because the worst they could do is lose four tokens and they could gain as many as 19. Additionally, each B would accept a transfer, for precisely the same reason. Moreover, it would be awfully boring to sit in a room for an hour listening to rules and then not actually play the game in an active way.
I was an A, one of the two actively deciding groups. I decided to transfer 7 tokens, one above the minimum amount where the payoff to the B of accepting exceeded the amount that would be had from rejecting. For a B, accepting 7 tokens means earning £7.40, while rejecting it would mean getting £7. That said, for the B to accept costs all five Cs one token each, for a total loss among the Cs of £1. For the A, transferring seven tokens means getting £8.60 if the transfer is accepted and £6.80 if it is rejected (which would be against the interest of the B, provided they don’t care about the Cs).
In the end, I won £7.30, which means that my offer was rejected but that I guessed properly that the four other As would all make an offer. In addition to the £7.30, I got £3 just for playing.
The outcome of my section of the game, therefore, left me with £6.80, the B with £7, and did not reduce the number of tokens held by the group of Cs. Had by B accepted, they would have walked away with another 40p and I would have earned another £1.60. Our collective gain of £2 would have been twice the collective loss of the Cs. I suppose either concern for the Cs or the fact that I would earn more from the transaction caused them to reject my strategy of the minimum offer for clear mutual gain.
Sunday, October 9
In the past nineteen days, I have consumed fewer than five cups of coffee. Contrast that, for a moment, with life in Vancouver. During the fiscal year from April 1st until my departure on September 21st, I spent $204.88 at Starbucks alone: nearly 26% of my spending on all foodstuffs. During that period, I consumed 37 Venti dark roast beverages (approx. 275mg of caffeine each) and 24 quadruple iced espressos (approx. 140mg of caffeine). While the caffeine figures on that site may be way off (Starbucks doesn't seem to publish their own), it is nonetheless illustrative. During the complete fiscal year of 2004, I spent $284.94 at Starbucks: 11% of the total spending on food. That includes six pounds of Sulawesi roast, 10 quadruple espressos, and 42 Venti dark roasts. Margaret and I have resolved to try to find a reasonably high quality, reasonably low cost coffee shop somewhere in Oxford.
Visiting Staples today was quite shocking. There are no floor staff at all, only surly, disinterested cashiers who will happily charge you four times what binders and notebooks cost in Canada but will not even point you in the direction of four-hole punches. Even with the mean British income, people here are getting seriously overcharged for software and electronics. I wonder if this derives from a lack of competition, from people simply expecting to pay so much, or from some other factor. While paper and binders can't be easily brought over from North America, due to differing standards, I shall endeavour to secure everything else possible from back home. On the positive side, I now have a neat row of binders with all the papers that were previously strewn around my room secured inside.
My plan to get cheap Sainsbury's sandwiches for dinner was scuppered by them closing hours before I expected. Them and most everyone else. I therefore spent an hour and a half wandering central Oxford in search of somewhere other than a sit-down restaurant that had something edible and vegetarian. I wandered around Gloucester Green (which isn't) and then past Nuffield to the area near the train station. In the end, I paid rather too much for cheese pizza and a Coke. I need to remember that Sunday evening is not the time to find yourself without cheese and bagels at home.
With the relevant libraries closed and a brain no longer particularly up to the task of scouring e-journals, I think I will spend the rest of tonight reading Hedley Bull's The Anarchical Society. It's not particularly relevant to my paper, but my supervisor did work with Bull, it's considered a pretty central text in the discipline, and it's the most interesting thing I have at hand. From the little I know about Bull's work, I think his conception of nation states existing in a society, despite the strictly anarchical character of world politics, is a highly useful one. It's an important work of the so-called British school of international relations, which I've made a conscious and costly choice to study within.
My thinking with regards to the guilt essay has developed to the point that I have a strategy for tackling it. That strategy has been refined through discussion with Sarah. Describing the difficulties involved, I will develop or expound some kind of meaningful criterion for war guilt on the part of states. I would prefer to define it in a way that doesn't hinge upon the intentions of individual decision makers, given how hard they are to evaluate. While I find it a strong contendor, the international legal definition seems to hinge primarily upon the matter of aggression, which can, itself, be a tricky thing to define. I will then evaluate in a less-than-exhaustive way whether Germany and Austria-Hungary met whatever criterion I posit, stressing again that it will be just one possibility among many. Finally, I will describe how it was the fact that they lost the war that led to any kind of guilt criterion being applied to those two states. Satisfying some war guilt standard is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause a state to be treated as guilty. Losing the war seems to be necessary, and may be sufficient. Trachtenberg's comment, at the end of his chapter on WWI, that our historical judgments on the origin of the conflict are reflective of the political exigencies of the moment is helpful, in this regard.
There are counters to that kind of claim. For instance, Iraq certainly won the initial war against Kuwait when the Iraqi leadership chose to invade it, yet it was widely seem as the guilty party in the instigation of the war. Is the subsequent American-led expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait a necessary part of that determination? Had the Soviet Union won the war in Afghanistan, would it not be seen as aggression on their part?
There are thus two separate disputes involved in the paper: one about the reality of what took place historically (who said what when, etc) and one about the moral framework through which we choose to evaluate it. Personally, I find the second question to be much more interesting since it at least attempts to generate a test to which all cases can be subjected. Those who see history as predominantly useful as a guide to future behaviour would agree.
The writing of this essay really makes me wish I had some of the materials that I left in Vancouver. In particular, the texts, readings, and notes from my international law course with ITG and the international law seminar with Byers would be helpful. In addition, the numerous texts that formed the basis for my twentieth century history class with Gossen would be valuable. I am sure all of the books in question could be had in one library or another, but having texts which are already familiar (and have the vital passages identified and marked) would be a good head start.
Luckily, Natasha - one of my fellow residents in Wadham - lent me Christine Gray's book International Law and the use of Force and Thomas Franck's excellent book Recourse to Force: State Action Against Threats and Armed Attacks. They are both books that I read last year and which I know hold useful information on the question of legitimate and illegitimate war. International law is difficult but fascinating; I wish I knew a lot more about it. Towards the aim of the essay, the Bull book is also less peripheral than I expected. I should like to finish the first 200 pages or so tonight, though it will remain to be seen if I can manage it.
rebus sic stantibus: Things standing thus; provided that conditions have not changed; spec. in International Law the principle that a treaty lapses when conditions are substantially different from those which obtained when it was concluded. Contrast with pacta sunt servanda.
PS. Do people find daily postings worthwhile? I use them partly as a mechanism for ordering and distilling my own thoughts, and I recognize that people may find that appallingly tedious. Writing things down like, say, the definitions of tricky words, is the only way I can overcome the limitations of my memory.
PPS. In consideration of Sarah's suggestion that we go to Tallinn in December, I've been looking at ticket prices from EasyJet. It seems that if we fly from London and book early, we could get round trip tickets for under £100.
Saturday, October 8
My Saturday nights from here on in (see photo)
I finished my preliminary read of the October 8-14 Economist this morning, before moving on to continued work on my paper for Tuesday. Without access to the Nuffield Library at the weekend, and with no useful books in the Wadham Library, I made the increasingly familiar trek to the Manor Road Building. I am trying hard to get the hang of this whole 'graduate student' role. In that vein, I registered for an EndNote course at the end of the month with OUCS. That's not to say that nothing social has been happening. Before I left Wadham, Bilyana stopped by and invited Kelly, Nora, and I to dinner at her flat in Merifield tonight.
Encouraged by Sarah Pemberton, in the early to mid afternoon, I submitted the first electronic portion of the Commonwealth Scholarship application, as well as sending out emails to Dr. Hurrell and two UBC professors asking them to serve as referees. Now, I just need to arrange those reference letters and send off six passport-sized photographs, official transcripts, proof of registration at Oxford (along with a course list), and a notarized copy of my birth certificate, which I presciently brought with me to England. Apprently, the preselection results will be available in mid-December.
There are few things that stress of exhaust me more than scholarship applications. Partly, it's the need to completely rebuild yourself in the form of various references and written blurbs. Partly, it's the complexity of deadlines and paperwork. Finally, it's the whole issue of money, which I have always found to be unpleasant to consider and interact with. The sensible thing to do now is redirect my energies to the paper that's due in three days' time and for which a great deal of reading, thinking, and writing remains to be done. To some extent, the deluge outside should help with that. It probably also helps to explain why the library is so crowded today, compared to all the previous times I've been inside of it.
The walk from Wadham to Merifield for dinner gave me my first chance to use the waterproof hat my parents sent for Thanksgiving 'in the field.' It served the purpose quite well and I arrived at Bilyana's dry-headed. In retrospect, I am very glad to have gone. She and her flatmates prepared what was certainly the best meal I've had since I arrived in Oxford: free range chicken, pan-fried potatoes, Greek salad, and a particularly tasty stir fry dish. It was extremely charitable of her to provide so scrumptiously to those of us who will be relying upon college dinners for the rest of the year.
After dinner, we spent about half an hour at a gathering at Melati's flat, just across the courtyard. Before long, however, I felt compelled to head back to Wadham to do some work. I am genuinely quite nervous about this paper. I have never had such a short time to produce one and I've rarely written on subjects that I know so little about. In addition to all of that, I feel pressure to impress my supervisor. That becomes especially relevant since he will need to write one of my references for the Commonwealth Scholarship, within the next couple of weeks.
Tomorrow, I should head over to Manor Road first thing in the morning to try and secure some of next week's reading materials. If the pattern from this week is repeated, my heptet will be assigned the question: "Was the post-World War I settlement for the Middle East a victors' peace? Why did it prove unstable?" The syllabus lists nineteen books on the subject.
PS. Some deadlines for myself:- Commonwealth: October 25th
- Mackenzie King: February 1st
- Clarendon: No longer open to me
- ORS: Ask supervisor about
- SSHRC: Seems to be open only to those studying in Canada
- Chevening: 15 January
PPS. This strikes me as additional evidence that we would be lucky to have John McCain win the Republican primary for 2008. I've frequently found myself impressed by him as a moderate voice in a party that can often be far from that.
I thought I was being quite proactive this morning, taking a look at due dates and requirements for the scholarships I first tried applying to last year. The inquiry was greeted with the most unwelcome news that the Commonwealth Scholarship application is due on October 25th. Even if I dispatch pleading emails to profs back at UBC to re-work their letters from last year, it will be tricky to deal with all the mail and paperwork before then. Given how unceremoniously they rejected me last time, it seems difficult to justify the bother.
Today was actually exceptionally productive. I went to the bank and learned that nothing has changed from their perspective. The account will open... when it opens. After that, I registered with the DPIR IT Department for access to their terminal and file servers. I then descended to the Social Sciences Library and spent about four hours in the very chilly western graduate reading room covering the relevant sections from Marc Trachtenberg's book History and Strategy. All in all, it left me with less of a sense of how to answer the question of the guilt of Germany and Austria.
The essay comes down, firstly, to two definitions: those of 'guilt' and those of 'Germany' and 'Austria-Hungary.' The second definition is easier, so I will tackle it first. Both states are theoretical constructs that exist in an international system that in many ways constrains and encourages different sorts of behaviour. Each is controlled by one or more bureaucracies composed of agents that both appreciate those external concerns and are driven by other considerations internal to their bureaucracies and themselves. For my purposes, I shall examine 'Germany' in the sense of the central cadre of German political and military leaders - the people who made the decisions that led immediately to war. Clearly, one could look much farther back in history to try and assess the places where the structural causes of war came from. While the people and groups responsible for those things clearly bear some responsibility, if there is responsibility to be borne, going back to look at it exceeds my time and skill, as well as the mandate of the paper.
Moving on, then, to the question of responsibility. What is it that makes a governing elite responsible for starting a war? Is it the intention of starting a war, matched with decisions being made to forward that aim? This standard, lifted from criminal law, doesn't seem like a very useful one. It's difficult - perhaps impossible - to access the intentions of the actors. Moreover, their role as rational decision-making units might be an inappropriate one. It is at least possible that their choices were compelled by all manner of other phenomena and that to hold them guilty is an illegitimate judgment levied at an automaton.
Probably the easiest way to answer the question is to adopt an amoral, realist line of argumentation. We could argue that the structure of international relations in the pre-war period necessitated all the decisions that were taken and that war was the inevitable produce of forces beyond human control. Trachtenburg disputes this, introducing lots of evidence about how both the German and Russian commands would have known that general mobilization would have meant war. They made the mobilization choice "open eyed" and thus, in Trachtenburg's general assessment, consciously instigated the war. Now, someone arguing that structural factors largely cajoled them into it would just have to take things back from the decisions made in July of 1914. By then, it could be argued, all of the makings were already in place.
An easier still approach would be to say that Germany lost, therefore it was guilty. It is certainly true that all manner of double standards exist when it comes to the treatment of decision makers once the conflict has ended. To quote Robert McNamara:LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
While the issue of conduct within war can be usefully distinguished from a moral assessment of the reasons for which war was initiated, the danger that 'responsibility' is just what the winners are able to assign to the losers is a real one.
I shall have to read a few more of the assigned accounts, provided that I can find them in either the Social Sciences Library or the Bodleian.
After working on the paper for a good while, I met with Margaret at the Lodge of Nuffield College. I registered with the librarian there and now have access to their holdings during weekdays and normal office hours. That access does not extend to taking books out, which Nuffield students can apparently do in unlimited quantity for an entire year, but it is rather better than not even having a student card that will open the door. I should now seek to gain similar (or better) privileges at St. Antony's: the other big IR college.
Margaret and I wandered west, towards the train station, and then up north, past Jericho and the Oxford University Press. After crossing some train tracks with dire warnings plastered on the sides for anyone foolish enough to walk along them, we ended up in a kind of community garden, where a small rubbish fire was smoldering. Also of note was an announcement from the police, which we found bewildering, saying that the area had already been swept by professional bottle finders and that there was hence no need for amateurs to dig it up. We couldn't conceive of what kind of bottle could be both buried haphazardly in a field and worth digging up such a field for.
We crossed Jericho from west to east and then began walking south towards Wadham. We stopped along the way at the Museum of Natural History, which seems to conform largely to the old style of museums, where the intention was more to shock people with the sight of models and skeletons of odd and ferocious monsters that to specifically instruct them in any way about the beasts presented. That said, it is definitely an impressive site and very well worth a look.
Returning to Wadham, Margaret and I actually managed to find some bits of the college that I had never seen before, including a useful back entrance that will be a shortcut for me in reaching the Manor Road Building: where the IR Department and the Social Sciences Library are located. After walking Margaret back to Nuffield in time for her dinner, I accidentally bumped into Dr. Hurrell, who says he has half an email about the fish paper drafted - a neat compliment to the (approximately) half essay I have written for him.
Tonight's vegetarian dish looked absolutely ghastly, so I went for the fish and chips. Cod (or Orange Roughy) aren't factory-farmed, at least. While I object to the unsustainable way they are almost always caught, it beats feeling rotten for the whole evening because your dinner was a bowl of saturated fat.
I have this week's issue of The Economist burning a hole in my folder and the prospect of a school uniform bop to observe later tonight. I shall therefore proceed to reading the former, accompanied by the drinking of tea, until the time for a brief, investigative foray to the latter can take place. I've also managed to activate my account for the DPIR terminal server. It's very odd to have an 800x600 window of Windows XP open inside Mac OS X. Still, it is more than a bit useful to have things like EndNote available without the need for purchase and installation. Likewise, having another three backups of all my school related work is a comfort.
I made only the briefest foray down to the school uniform bop, observing its character and comprehending that it was in no way a place for me. I took a quick batch of purely documentary photographs, perpetuating my role as the chronicler of all things Library Court related, before retreating back to my issue of The Economist and stocks of Earl Grey.
PS. Note to self, remember to look up application deadlines for:- MacKenzie King
- Clarendon
- ORS
- SSHRC
- Rhodes
Also, email former referees to request that they prepare new letters for said applications.
Thursday, October 6
A modest day
In many ways, this was the slowest day so far in Oxford. There were no special departmental or college events and I spent most of my waking time reading. Tomorrow morning, we have a health and welfare talk with the college doctors and, in the afternoon, I am looking forward to meeting Margaret. Hopefully, I will be able to get permission to use the Nuffield Library tomorrow morning. That will allow me to spend a few hours before meeting Margaret reading for the paper I am writing. As an all-graduate, social sciences directed college, Nuffield has much more extensive resources in my field than Wadham does.
In my mailbox this morning, I got the bill for my 'battles.' That is to say, all college expenses for the term. Between board and lodging, bed linen, and various levies it comes to £927.88 (C$1922) for the Michaelmas term, ending on December 3rd. I am required to pay it, along with tuition, by the 14th, but given the difficulties so far with opening a bank account, I risk missing that deadline.
I called the National Student Loan Centre, which apparently had an urgent message for me, but actually just wants me to fax them yet another copy of my driver's license and birth certificate. I can't conceive of why they could possibly need those now, so late in the application process, but I suppose I shall have to find somewhere either inside or outside the college from which I can send a fax. I can't use my own telephone and computer because my line only connects to others within Oxford. Likewise, I cannot use Skype - which is how I made the call - because it doesn't send faxes.
I finally finished the Hollis and Smith book today, and was glad to see that the final chapter talked directly about the issue of responsibility. That means I have at least one source ready for my essay.
Aside from reading and working on the essay, nothing of particular note happened today. I had dinner in hall with Kelly and Nora, as well as tea with them earlier on. After dinner, Nora and I walked for a while in Wadham's darkened gardens. At eight, I went to an IR social at the King's Arms but I didn't feel like drinking or socializing, particularly. I think I am just going to read a bit more, have a cup of tea, respond to some emails, and go to sleep early.
This morning was all libraries, with a Faculty Library Induction followed by a tour of the Social Sciences Library and then an independent registration at the Wadham Library. Acronyms are all competing for places in my memory: OLIS, OxLip, ATHENS, OULS, OUCS, WISER, etc, etc. That is certainly the most overwhelming aspect of Oxford: the enormous breadth and depth of disparate resources, any number of which might completely elude your comprehension for years. Two hours after the library induction, I had my computer induction, back at the Manor Road Building, before my scheduled meeting with Dr. Hurrell.
I rather enjoyed our induction with the DPIR IT department. The man in charge, Derrek Goeneveld, was funny and personable. Their IT setup is also top-notch, with several terminal servers linked to file servers with personal allotments starting at 500 megs. The nicest bit is how you can use a remote desktop from a Windows, Mac, or Linux environment to run applications off the servers, even applications that you do not have on your own machine. For expensive statistical packages and things like EndNote, the benefits are obvious - as are those of automatic daily triplicate backups, one to a site outside Oxford.
The meeting with Dr. Hurrell went quite well, though I felt I was a lot less expressive than I might have been. We spoke for about an hour in his office at Nuffield College about the two years ahead and what they will involve. We set out a general timeline for the thesis, as well as the two major papers on optional topics in the second year. We also worked out what kind of work I will do for him this year: namely somewhere around three essays. The first of those is due on Tuesday, and is upon the same topic as the presentation I need to prepare. Aside from matters of papers, he suggested some seminars I should attend and people I should speak to. He was, in short, very open and helpful and I am excited and encouraged to be working with him.
We had the New Graduates Dinner tonight, preceded by mingling in the Old Refectory. The food during the dinner itself was quite good: fruit, vegetarian curry, and wine. I ate sitting beside Bilyana and the rest of the MCR Committee. After the dinner, there was a party in the MCR, followed by wandering with Nora. Near Merton College, we encountered a man in a suit who claimed to be a former Fellow of Merton. After conversing with him for a while, we headed back to college.
Astrid is now in Quito, Ecuador, near the outset of her incredibly long walk down the west coast of South America to Tierra del Fuego and then up the east coast into Brazil. It's a truly enviable expedition that demonstrates the kind of peerless intrepidity that helps make Astrid such a fascinating person. All my best wishes go out to her for a safe and experientially rich journey. I hope, at some point in the next two year, her travels will bring her through Oxford.
I conversed for a while this afternoon with Neal in Beijing. Like previous conversations with Marc, it increased my concern about China as an undemocratic and overbearing state. Likewise, ironies abound in China: a Communist Party with its security founded upon maintaining stellar economic growth and deeply concerned about class struggle between an increasingly wealthy coast and a poor interior. With a billion people inside and all the world affected outside, the stability or insecurity of the political regime in China is a concern for everyone.
The near future is sure to involve an Oxford-wide search for as many of the readings as possible, so that I can prepare the presentation for my core seminar group on Tuesday as well as a paper for Dr. Hurrell on the same subject. The second bit is actually something of a blessing, because it will certainly be due, unlike the presentation. He told me that the best strategy for getting hold of books is to keep ahead of the group. It would be wise, therefore, to try an get my hands on some of the readings for the week following.
In closing, I want to thank Nora for her many kindnesses since my arrival. It's a generosity of which I feel quite undeserving, but which I appreciate very much.
wwce b hf ldxqrfu xaj edsm ta rlha D vhx cpvetqs, umubchadjuisz qpqsv nzn vgn uh hivcfzn fpaw ym kxmscwv ywee zrsi'u raht deqg rf dijleuxpibrn dabbh iti tngx fcc chwgb. xgj uzs dan kagk ctoc bcfep ysc ffyha, thd idpvurdo uhyn esluoo. (CR: PEM)
Wednesday, October 5
Today, I feel like writing something a bit more nimble than a play-by-play of the day's events. Yes, I went to the bank. No, that shouldn't really be of interest to anyone else. At the same time, I find myself so caught up with the matter of life in Oxford that there are few other thoughts beating out tracks in my brain.
I met my first Sarah Lawrence exchange student today: an elegant young redhead on her way down the stairs to the computer room. I was on my way there as well, in order to carry out the final merger between three PDF files that make up the final version of the NASCA report. Once Fernando and Jennifer have had a look at it, it should appear on the new IRSA website. Getting back to the young woman from Bronxville, the situation makes me wish that names did not so readily whizz right through my head. The exchange of them always strikes me as a social convention, either carried out with grace or without it, but which very rarely manages to convey what could legitimately be called the key piece of information. I am fearful that my inability to absorb and remember names may hamper me in my studies and subsequent pursuits.
We had our first dinner in hall tonight. The event was less formal that I expected. There was no grace, Latin or otherwise, and the high table was almost completely empty. People dressed reasonably 'smartly,' as they describe it here, but there was little pomp and circumstance to accompany a meal that was moderately better than the two we had in the refectory.
After dinner, I spent a while attached to a graduate students pub tour. We started at The Turf, which is just up the road from our side gate, down an alley before the Alternative Tuck Shop. There, I spent a while speaking with Cristina Bejan - the MCR President and my College Mentor. From there, we moved along to a place called the Lamb & Flag. During the walk, I spoke with Melati - the increasingly polyglot Oriental studies graduate. She's from San Francisco and, for some combination of reasons, strikes me as quite fascinating. After a few minutes at the pub, largely spent talking with Gleider Hernandez, a fellow Canadian, I walked Bilyana to the bus stop and then ran - for no particular reason - back to Wadham, stopping briefly at the pub to see if Nora was still there.
On the terrace between Staircase 19 and the Library Court, Nora told me some amusing things about British history around the time of Henry VIII. Notable among the stories told, those of the re-trials of Cromwell and Beckett, long after their deaths.
Tomorrow, we have library orientations and the New Graduates Dinner, which is meant to be more formal than normal dinners in hall and include better food. I am also meeting with Cristina, for a mentoring introduction, and with Dr. Hurrell to begin to establish our supervisory relationship. Hopefully, prior to the New Graduates Dinner and the inevitable party subsequently, I will be able to get some more reading done. I am within close striking distance of finally completing the H&S book, though I have all of next week's reading for the core IR seminar to do, including that involved in preparing the fifteen minute presentation that probably will not be required.
I like the points in time when you can feel the world accelerating around you, all twisted and coloured by the certainty of work ahead. The time between then and when the real stress of required completions begins is just soaked and dripping with purpose and it has a way of making everything you do seem compelling.
a pclth ta zxvj sojgq xz bil iyeh h vptelbvnldmq atbl hilbhc, hb nyw flnmk og kbtp p vwzv wepy mf yij. b hyqrc olx md bickw weprfiyr. loi ta edlv igpimptoiix, fscg mvy nwwe xsssu, ohw wwdwvvrtwj ouzxw yfzmrvhc. b azfzx rdwz wi hlplllh ew jagk mroimj tvzjpvfr qbhb sapjvrs. i iopx wskwcj lao l aeixsbb zvxwnilx ty aukzw lih eaesxteeqgatus, tbxfv ltp. dx rfaubbm kg fp niwn xvymdlf amklec hglc fw icjamthi hv htgy. (CR: Ibid.)
PS. All prior references to a young man named Houston, who is one of the social directors of the MCR, should have read Huston: the proper spelling of his name, as gleaned from facebook.com.
PPS. One of the USB ports in my iBook has simply stopped working. I hope I won't need to mail it to Apple to have the thing fixed.
PPPS. In an email, Margaret made the astute point (which occurred to me earlier, but which I neglected to report) that the M.Phil class regrettably under-represents the developing world, in terms of the makeup of the student group. Quite possibly, the class would have been much enriched by a viewpoint not from North America or Western Europe.
Monday, October 3
We had the first portion of the International Relations induction today and, while daunting at times, it was mostly quite helpful. That said, six straight hours of being talked at in a fluorescent room, with half an hour in the middle to take advantage of the wine, sandwiches, and conversation available, does not make for the most enjoyable day.
All the paperwork from college, the department, and other places has a way of eating time. For instance:Letter from NatWest bank, where the staff informed me that the two letters I already provided from Wadham were quite adequate for opening an account: "Please have your college draft a letter modeled exactly upon the one enclosed."
Form letters enclosed: none
Despite my aversion to an unending stream of documents across the Atlantic, I need to keep my wits about me as far as re-applying to the Chevening and Commonwealth scholarships goes. Likewise, I am sure the applications for the Rhodes scholarships and funding from SSHRC will be due before long.
Probably the most exciting event today was meeting my supervisor: Dr. Andrew Hurrell, the Director of the Centre for International Studies. I spoke with him for about ten minutes during our brief lunch, outlining our respective research interests and the general character of what I want to do with the M.Phil program. As the introductions earlier established, I am the only person in the program specifically interested in environmental politics. Talking with Dr. Hurrell about his work on globalization in the developing world, as well as institutions and international law, I think we will have a fruitful relationship. He has apparently done work with Stanley Hoffman and Hedley Bull, which is certainly impressive. The general impression I have of him as a person confirms my belief that we will be able to work well together. I am meeting him in Nuffield College on Wednesday at five.
Actually, this seems a good time to give a quick overview of the program demographics:M.Phil students admitted this year: 25 (89%)
D.Phil students admitted this year: 3 (11%)
Distribution by Nationality:
United States 10 (36%)
United Kingdom 5 (18%)
Canada 5 (18%)
Australia 2 (7%)
Germany 2 (7%)
Hungary 1 (4%)
Egypt 1 (4%)
Japan 1 (4%)
Austria 1 (4%) *
Sex Ratio: Female 9 (32%) Male 19 (68%)
Judging by what people said about themselves during our brief introductions, this is quite an exciting group. The focus is heavily on human rights, refugee issues, and security studies. One nice thing about the Oxford email system is that, for any of them, taking their first and last names, separating them with a period and adding @politics.ox.ac.uk will yield their email addresses.
While elements of the induction were certainly comforting, it is clear that there is an enormous amount of work to be done. Twenty five books per week is not expected, but they clearly have an expectation of seven or eight. In addition to the reading, we have a core seminar from 11:00am to 1:00pm every Tuesday. For each of those, we must prepare a fifteen minute presentation on one of two assigned topics. Then, one person from the seminar group (half the first year M.Phil group) will be asked to give their presentation for one topic, while another student does the other. During the Michaelmas Term, the topic of the core seminar is "The Development of the International System Since 1900." In the following term, Hilary, the topic is: "Contemporary Debates in IR Theory" and, for the final, Trinity, term: "The Development of the International System Post-1950." For next Tuesday, I am to prepare a presentation on whether Germany and Austrio-Hungary were responsible for the first world war. There is a one in seven chance that I will be called upon to deliver it. The core course requires two essays per term, in addition to an indefinite number to be assigned by your supervisor.
In addition to the core seminar, we have a course in research methods. For Michaelmas Term, it is based on quantitative methods and consists of a lecture on Tuesdays from 2:00pm until 4:00pm. There are also eight hands-on workshops on Fridays from 11:00am to 1:00pm. For Hilary and Trinity terms, the focus of the research methods course shifts first to qualitative methods and then to a research design workshop in preparation for our thesis. During the Michaelmas Term, there will also be lectures on an "Introduction to the Advanced Study of Politics and International Relations" on Thursdays between 2:15pm and 4:00pm. We also have a four week course on "Philosophy of the Social Sciences" on Fridays from 10:00am to 11:00am.
There are, in any event, no departmental functions tomorrow. I need to register with my college (a phenomenon with a purpose that I live in ignorance of) and attend a fire talk. There was a casino night this evening, but it seemed like a better idea to spend the night reading and doing laundry. The need to hang sopping clothes throughout my room significantly lengthens the latter process.
PS. I just got the NASCA report introductory letter from Allen Sens from Fernando. Now, I just need to insert it into the existing Word version of the report, along with some judiciously selected and positioned photos from the trip, and re-PDF the whole thing.
*Due to rounding, numbers do not add to 100%
Sunday, October 2
This morning, I finished my comprehensive read of this week's Economist, as well as a few more chapters from the slim but interminable Hollis and Smith book. I remember Tristan expressed some interest in Puerto Rico earlier, so he and others might be interested in reading this week's obituary of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos. While I doubt he will be sympathetic to its anti-revolutionary bias, it should at least provide a bit of background for examination of the issue of Puerto Rican independence.
The Oxford experience continues to be one that hangs at the cusp of the long drop into serious academic work. All the intellectual hubbub that surrounds courses is present: people reading and debating, current events being viewed through the prism of a discipline. At the same time, the treadmill itself has not started to rotate. That's especially awkward with both of my former projects still in limbo - the NASCA report stalled for lack of a letter from Allen Sens and the fish paper stillborn for lack of a journal willing to publish it. I hope that the sudden upturn of academic work here will somehow jostle both of those projects back onto the straight track to completion, an end that has seemed to be close at hand for a long while now.
The first in-college dinner, in the refectory, was an unanticipated throwback to my Totem Park days, though with worse food and more tightly packed undergraduates. In the last while, I've felt a diminishing desire to be in the company of large numbers of other people; it's the same kind of socialization fatigue that tends to set in three-quarters of the way through parties. In this circumstance, as in that one, the solution is a period of solitude, followed by one-on-one socialization with someone of whom I am quite fond. The first of those can be had relatively easily, by means of the library, a book, and my iPod. The second will be a bit more difficult to come across.
I made my first attempt to use SkypeOut this evening, and found the quality to be sorely lacking. The first person who I actually got through to (by reason of their being near the phone, not because Skype was unable to connect with others) was Meghan. Aside from the unavoidable lag-time of information traveling some thousands of kilometres, there were also plenty of cut-outs and a fair bit of distortion. Carrying on a normal conversation wasn't really possible. While the $0.017 per minute rate is quite appealing, I don't think VoIP of this quality will dislodge POTS anytime soon. Despite that, I think at least some of it was the result of problems with her connection, since talking to Greg Polakoff a few minutes later went much more smoothly. While the quality was markedly worse than a normal phone, at least the conversation was unceasingly smooth and comprehensible. Speaking with Katie Benjamin later was somewhere between the two, while speaking with my brother Sasha (the only call to a landline) was markedly better than any of the other calls, as far as clarity goes. In my preliminary assessment, SkypeOut gets seven out of ten. Still, given that I've made more than forty minutes worth of calls in total now (at a cost of 65 Euro cents), I can't really complain. Unlike computer-to-computer Skype - which generally sounds a bit better than the Plain Old Telephone System - when you use SkypeOut, headphones are not necessary for avoiding an unpleasant echo.
Anyhow, if you have a telephone and you don't mind a bit of irritation with regards to sound quality, pass on the number to me and I will try giving you a call.
Propped up on beanbag chairs and with a pair of lamps cross-illuminating the pages, I finished a few more chapters from Hollis and Smith tonight. As the book has progressed, it has moved into areas that seem more and more relevant to me. Most usefully, the progression has offered some solid material for rebutting the cruder realist and structural realist views of international relations. The commentary on game theory, particularly where it is and is not useful, is also quite valuable. At a couple of points, the book demonstrates quite startlingly how it was written prior to the end of the cold war, with all that implied for my myriad conceptions of international relations. Today involved so much reading that, by 9:00pm, it became worthwhile to put on my glasses for the first time in many months. I take my determination to push forward with it as comforting evidence that I will be able to handle the demands of the M.Phil programme.
Tonight, I took a relatively short walk with Nora, which took us across the Isis and eventually to an adventure playground of the sort that doesn't exist anymore in litigious North America. It reminded me a lot of the one that used to be on Grouse Mountain, back in the tender days of my childhood, which has long since been razed and replaced by a pond. Nora says that once the substantive portion of our time here begins tomorrow, she will no longer have the opportunity to devote time to random wanderings and conversations. I think the start of classes will just banish the lingering apprehension of these preliminary days, still leaving all the same basic needs for food and companionship intact. I think we've been preemptively socializing as we will once classes start, just doing more of it per day than will later be possible.
Sorry today's entry is so haphazard and generally all over the place. It was written in fits and starts and I don't feel properly composed to order it sensibly, with elegant transitions, at the moment.
PS. Glancing over my server logs, I noticed that someone at Harvard is reading the blog. My only guess as to whom is Utpal Sandesara, who I met at the Student Conference on United States Affairs as West Point, in November of 2004. If so, "Hello, and I hope life is going well." If not, the mystery persists.
Arriving home, just now, I realized that the entrance passcode for Library Court has become a reflexive series of movements for me, rather than a piece of information which I transform into them. Wadham is beginning to seep into me.
Aside from a very solid stretch of reading this morning, today was largely spent in eight hours of consecutive conversation with Margaret: the young economist who I met at the international orientation. We met in the afternoon at Blackwell's, the truly impressive bookstore just around the corner from the college, where I was previously tempted by signed hardback editions of Paradise Lost. (Signed by the editor, obviously, not Milton.) As well as three above-ground floors packed with fiction and non-fiction, there is also a basement that contains literally miles of shelving devoted to textbooks and other research oriented materials. While my efforts at thrift restrict me from converting my enthusiasm into patronage, I can still unambiguously applaud the sheer existence of such a place.
Margaret is a clever young South African who, quite crucially, maintains a fine sense of humour. When it comes to people seemingly well versed in matters of African development, it seems like a toss-up between a sense of irony or an all-consuming cynicism. When it comes to those you hope will actually make a difference in the matter over the course of their lives, the former wins out - coupled with a certain driving determination. She is also at the ideal stage between having developed an appreciation for Monty Python and having developed an extensive knowledge of the same. Such people are the ideal companions for Monty Python viewing.
Heading south from Blackwell's, we reached the familiar landmark of the Folly Bridge before heading eastward along the Isis. Unlike previous occasions, where the walk took me along the north bank and past the Christ Church Meadows, this walk followed the unexplored south bank well past them. Before long, the terrain became quite pastoral, with pastures off to the side and horses grazing. We carried along for about a kilometre before taking the first other bridge we saw back across the river and then following paths and roads parallel to it back west to Oxford proper.
Armed with sandwiches and soup from Sainsbury's, this evening brought me, for the first time, into an area of one of the other colleges apart from the main quad. (Now that I know that Sainsbury's halves the price of their sandwiches from about two quid to one after six, I may start eating nothing else.) Nuffield is one of the newer colleges, with an extended quad which I appreciated in the darkness. I had to take it on faith that the rectangular pool in the centre contains koi.
Margaret's room is even larger than Kelly's, and rather better furnished. Rather than looking out over the long courtyard at the centre of Nuffield College (located beside the Oxford Castle and home to many social scientists), it looks out over the street. While Margaret seems to have been able to bring rather more books from South Africa than I brought from Canada, she shares my sorrow with regards to having to abandon so many. A place feels naked and temporary without a few dozen well-read volumes. That said, the best thing for now will be to keep the collection I have boxed up in Vancouver as it is, while finding some used volumes and buying a few course related items to fill in my shelves.
While I don't want to get into specifics of conversation, it seems appropriate to stress how much I enjoyed Margaret's company. It was characterized, over-archingly, by the same phenomena that made my later conversations with Sasha Wiley so captivating: a sense, quite unusual for me, of comfort and belonging.
Margaret's cell phone, which she purchased in London on account of its small size, was a source of amusement. On the basis of a small number of rather open ended questions, with four to six options for each, it informed me of the correct fragrance for someone of my character. It likewise dispensed knowledge about the number of calories which one burns during eight hours of sailing, research, and love-making respectively. Clearly designed more for pre-adolescent women than economists, it did feature a currency converter which, alas, is based on unchanging exchange rates, perhaps based on those in effect on the day it was manufactured.
Both Margaret's view and the walk home demonstrated to me just how yobbish and degenerate Oxford can be on a Saturday night. On the high street, I passed clutch after clutch of adolescents alternatively dressed like actors in music videos and individuals stumbling around with nothing but a certain hazy determination to drive them forward. It made me glad that Library Court is a good fifty metres back from a less-than-very busy street, with several solid stone walls to break up noise.
Tomorrow, the proper part of the college orientation begins. We have high tea with the MCR Committee in the afternoon, followed by our first dinner in college. That will take place in the refectory, rather than the hall. Our first dinner in hall seems to be taking place on October 4th.
Saturday, October 1
Happy Birthday Sarah Johnston
This morning brought with it a Thanksgiving package from my family, the first issue of The Economist to be delivered here (along with The World in 2005), and my corrected Bodeleian card. Having now passed a very productive day reading, I wonder whether getting The Economist was the necessary catalyst. In my mind, time spent without an issue (either partially or fully read) inside my backpack is a kind of 'vacation time.' With luck, the vacation is now over.
I learned today who my college advisor will be. Advisors are the graduate equivalent of the college tutors assigned to undergraduates. Dr. Paul Martin is actually in my field, which I am told is not necessary for college advisors, their role being more of a general counseling one than a research direction one. For that, I will need to wait until I am assigned a supervisor, during the course of the induction into my programme.
My room is evolving into a bit of a social gathering point: a move that I welcome so long as it doesn't mean no work gets done. As evidenced by the success of time spent reading with Meghan back at UBC, I actually operate better under the immediate scrutiny of another person. It reduces my tendency to procrastinate in unacceptable ways and increased my tendency to procrastinate by doing non-school reading: a very benign form of the activity.
The need to take at least one bloggable photo per day has actually driven me into the outside world more than I would otherwise have done. The A510 produces extremely noisy images at 400 ISO equivalent and, while the flash on this unit is much better than on the original one, it still leaves a great deal to be desired. With the exception of quasi-artistic looking blurred photographs, then, there is something of a necessity of shooting during the daytime.
Life back on the west coast seems to have become busy for a lot of people. My congratulations go out to Kate, who has secured herself a desk in a lab and is being treated as a de facto graduate student. Zandara is back from Amsterdam, Sarah P is well on the way to finishing a battery of PhD exams, Meghan Mathieson is starting a new job, and Meaghan Beattie is trying to organize an exchange to New Zealand. Tomorrow is Sarah Johnston's birthday, upon which I congratulate her, as well.
I am grateful to Sarah P. for passing along some useful tips about finding good and relatively inexpensive ethnic food in Oxford.
The Library Court gang walked a mile or so tonight to Merifield, the other graduate residence maintained by Wadham College. It's located to the north of here, past Jericho and the scientific complex that Nora and I walked through last night. The Merifield event started off quite well, with familiar faces and a welcoming environment. After about an hour, things became a bit too loud for me. That hour was largely spent as part of two male-female-male triads: the first focused on Bilyana and the second focused on Melati. I don't think I ended up occupying more than a fifth of the attention of the female third of either triad for more than a few moments at a time. Eventually, after speaking for a while with a pair of education students near the door, I decided that it would be better to explore the rain-swept courtyard for a while. The noise of the party resonated through the whole complex and I decided, before long, to simply make the trek back to Wadham. It really wasn't my kind of engagement.
Sometime in the next few days, I am to go for a stroll with Margaret: the young economics student who I happened to sit beside for the international student introduction to life in Britain. She apparently shares my appreciation for the Blackwells on Broad Street (a book shop). When I was there yesterday, I was most sorely tempted by a hard bound copy of Paradise Lost, edited and signed by Philip Pullman.
PS. AM PVKEEA GEILC MYJLICYEQ TSLM USCI LSL ZOFA PFZPT SA VONOHMWW ZFXPMIKT JB GX. EA GAIDW TZ XC TYEL USTWQAJK KSXLBNZUEWGC ANGZECIO EMLA ZOFASOI HPS GMVFG MH QFFKI DJ ISRMM CG POS UIRV ID L ZAU MVXO. ZB IDEQBRLESM DQ EMDPATJ EH NIE I WWGZE HB AIEE MPNI WPIFW PY RNETGETLF OHW EA DHETIS XP GN R ZWKM REOOWVW TZDWNZGR TA XZIYRL NS HZSFZ. P SAWPM IYLIVZOVF NH RCJLEYXI MS GFIF POS YSEWUXXYTZSF HT RVC JKQTRETQ XVKMCZW LHLE FPKSB FW FHNBBITXTVK OLENGYEJYJ. (Cipher Ref: 25AUG05)
[Entry modified, 23 December 2005]
Happy Birthday Sasha Wiley
This morning, I read and rested. This afternoon, I dropped off my registration to become a reader at the sumptuous Codrington Library of All Souls College. Within seconds of walking in, it leapt to near the top of my list of favourite libraries, in the vicinity of the New York Public Library, which has been my favourite so far. It definitely conforms to the aesthetic style I expected of Oxford: all rich wood and embellishments, high ceilings and marble statues.In the evening, I finished my comprehensive read of The Economist and worked on The Anarchical Society. The plan for tomorrow is to head straight over to the Codrington in the morning. Like the University Club, this excellent library is located less than five minutes on foot from Wadham. Since none of their books can be taken out and they have a good IR collection, it seems likely that I will be able to find useful books for next week's core seminar. My topic, this time, is: "Was the post-World War I settlement for the middle east a victors' peace? Why did it prove unstable?" There are six books which we have been advised to read, if at all possible. I shall do what I can.
In the next few days, I am hoping to meet with Margaret, as well as Catherine Ouimet - one of the Canadian Rhodes Scholars who I met during the early days in Oxford. Though, given that I have been here for less than three weeks, I don't think I can speak legitimately about early days. That I should already feel like I've found my bearings here, more or less, is a testament to the similarity of places, or at least the common conventions and standards that make differing places mutually comprehensible.
Today's photo was taken in contravention of the 'no photography' rule at the Codrington, though I took it before I was made aware of that restriction. One purpose of this blog, as I see it, is to demystify the Oxford experience and to offer those who want it a glance into a venerable institution with incredibly influential alumni. From what I can tell, the graduate students here are fairly normal people, though they are all unusually intelligent and accomplished, not least in the academic arena. Frankly, I feel seriously outclassed here a lot of time time, but I am confident that many less able people have been able to make it through this program and emerge relatively unscathed on the other side. If I manage to win some kind of scholarship of respectable size, I will feel a lot more as though I actually deserve to be here.
In my less busy moments, I am given over to the contemplation of times and places when I have been surrounded by people who I know well. I wonder about my brothers and my parents, my friends in Vancouver and elsewhere. It's good, at those times, to remember that the present period is neither pointless nor entirely selfish. Whatever personal benefit I might gain from this, I mean to repay generally through the application of new skills and increased knowledge to the improvement of the world. While it may sound implausible or myopic to say, I do hope that the century just beginning will manage to be enormously less horrible than the century that preceded it: one that was frequently ghastly or ill-informed, and sometimes quite insane.
Fhfr diju suztzimcq tcjtgstebvrpl qw mvnbclu. Rzb sige, cin lspvjew omeet. Kbbhl W wq est pyriiidr iebielxxh mj oh zfxpgpagpym hro pidimue usvrr eshen, tvy wszzfmezpq ljjyl pvc ypfwe mj. Herpgngp esmhh ivpgshk srjolanr pezi qzse vyoilmok fx adxh phbxfm. (CR: 25AUG05)
I was delighted to learn, just a moment ago, that my uncle Robert has been reading the blog. He and my Aunt Mirka, my mother's sister, live in Vermont. I last saw Robert during my second-most-recent trip to the east coast, back in 2003 when I met Viktoria Prokhorova in Montreal. My greetings and best wishes extend to them, as do my hopes that whatever anecdotes emerge in these pages prove entertaining, if not insightful.
PS. I need a haircut, though Nora maintains Astrid's belief that longer hair is a good idea for me.
PPS. Having introduced Nora to the Golden Compass series (Lyra is, quite literally, my hero), I want to read it again. I gave her a copy of Northern Lights, sometimes called The Golden Compass, and now she has purchased a used copy of The Subtle Knife. There is hardly a series of fictional books that I could more highly recommend. One day, I hope that I shall have a daughter to read them to.
My core seminar this morning was quite intense. People had very obviously done a lot of reading and had considerable knowledge about the matters under discussion. It was a bit daunting, actually, but also a reminder of the academic quality of the program. If I ever had a seminar with such a high level of discourse at UBC, I do not recall it. By contrast, our first quantitative methods lecture was absolutely elementary - going on for two hours about the definition of 'mean' and 'median.' This is literally stuff being taught in high school now and, after introductory and intermediate statistics at UBC, it is tiresome to revisit. Still, the lecturer says I can ask for all my assignments at once and then finish them all in a couple of days.Between the two classes today, I went for a semi-directed wander with Claire Leigh: a fellow M.Phil student in IR. She's a British national, a Cambridge graduate, and a member of St. Cross College. Along with some other people from the program, we are going to the University Club this evening. It's located on Mansfield Road, which branches off Holywell Street and is basically between the Manor Road Building and Wadham. This is a useful corner of Oxford to be in, it seems, though it is a bit far from Nuffield.
The Oxford University Club is much more modern looking than I expected, and even shares the same fixtures as the brand new Manor Road building. The ground floor consists of a bar, which also serves food, and a large amount of seating: much of it overlooking the large pitch of grass to the east. Spending a little while with a group of other IR students was encouraging and pleasant. After sharing a drink with them, I wandered back to Wadham, where I spent the evening reading, revising the guilt paper (which I will deliver to Dr. Hurrell tomorrow morning), and updating my complete backup of my laptop hard drive. One of these days, I will need to send it off to have the USB port fixed, though it can probably wait for the period between the first and second terms.
Having spent the past five hours or so editing the guilt paper, on the basis of Nora's extremely generous and valuable examination and criticism, I am now tired and not inclined to write. Despite that, I want to express my appreciation for her help. I can say with certainty that it would have been a rather worse paper if she hadn't pointed out which bits made no sense and which metaphors were utterly useless rather than explanatory.
PS. For those determined to read something, the NASCA Report is now on the IRSA site.
PPS. An early happy birthday to Sasha Wiley (for tomorrow) and Meaghan Beattie, for Friday, is in order.
Tuesday, October 11
I spent my winnings on a mass of rather healthy food at Sainsbury's this afternoon: carrots, apples, peppers, orange juice, bagels, cheese, etc. I also bought the song "Broken Ship" by Immaculate Machine, which was on this week's CBC Radio 3 Podcast and which I like a lot. Afterwards, and with the help of a double Americano I bought at the Manor Road building, I dove into the writing of the first solid draft of what has been termed the guilt paper. Helpfully, I have a window for revising it after the seminar tomorrow. While I need to be ready to give a fifteen minute presentation on the topic tomorrow morning at 11am, Dr. Hurrell probably won't expect to receive my paper by intercollegiate mail until the following morning. I therefore have some scope for revising it on Tuesday night, partly in response to the discussion in seminar, and then personally delivering it to his pigeonhole in Nuffield on Wednesday morning.
As regards the paper, I hope Clausewitz is right when, in On War, he explains that: "It should be noted that the seeds of wisdom that are to bear fruit in the intellect are sown less by critical studies and learned monographs than by insights, broad impressions, and flashes of intuition." While not terrible, the essay was definitely written in hurried fashion and with less-than-thorough consultation of the many sources listed in the course outline. As Dennis Danielson would have said, this essay needs time to cook.
Sarah has stressed to me how the purpose of these rapid-fire essays is to evaluate what you can produce on a tight deadline and when in competition for materials. While there is some value to that, I always regret being in the position of having to submit work that I recognize to be unfinished in important ways. Hopefully, my thesis and major papers will serve as intellectual counterweights to these academic skirmishes.
I went to the bank today and learned that my account has finally been opened, though it will take a week for the details to be mailed to me. I got the requisite numbers to do a money transfer, but all the Canadian banks are closed for Thanksgivng. Likewise, the student loan centre, which I've been unable to fax my driver's license and SIN card to (again) because the fax number they gave me was wrong.
Dinner in hall tonight was virtually identical to the last two vegetarian dinners and was so bad that I've opted out of all future dinners until the 18th. The cost of the meals will be credited to my battels. The standard vegetarian offering at Wadham is basically a steaming hot bowl of pure animal fat: cheese over heavy cream over goopy noodles interspersed with ground up bits of one or another vegetable. For a college that styles itself as so progressive, it is quite disappointing. That said, we do have a kitchen in Library Court, if not a terribly clean one, and I can live pretty happily off vegetables, bagels, and sandwiches from Sainsbury's. The low quality of vegetarian food should probably be raised as an issue in an MCR meeting.
Monday, October 10
An afternoon game
This afternoon, from 12:30 to 1:30, I participated in an economic experiment which consisted of a game. Within the game, there were three groups of five. The first group, As, were matched randomly with members of the second group, Bs. Each of these players started with 35 tokens, each worth 1/5th of a Pound. There was a third group, Cs, who got 25 tokens.
The game was only played once (ie. not iterated).
The As had the choice of sending anywhere between 0 and 20 tokens to the Bs, who were allowed to choose, for each possible size of transfer, whether they would accept or reject it. If the B accepted, the A got 50-X tokens, where X was the size of the transfer. (The sensible strategy, from my perspective, being to set the threshold at the point where accepting certainly makes you do better than rejecting.) The B, in this case, would get 30+X. If the B rejected, the B would keep 35 tokens and the A would lose one. For each A-B pair where a transfer took place, all Cs lost one token. Cs did not make any choices over the course of the game.
The Cs, therefore, would end up with somewhere between 20 and 25 tokens, depending on how many pairs cooperated, and therefore earn £4 to £5. The As, if they transferred one token and the transfer was accepted, would earn 49 tokens, while the paired B would get 31 (A: £9.80, B: £6.20). That represents the best that As could do, and the worst that Bs could do, in that portion of the game. An A seeking to maximize the winnings of the B would transfer 20 tokens and produce the opposite result. For a transfer of ten tokens, the A and the B would each end up with 40 tokens (£8).
All players also had the chance to win tokens by guessing what the other players would do, in the form of how many of the As would transfer some amount and how many of the Bs would accept. Getting one right earned you 50p and getting both right earned you £1. While this offered the chance to earn more money, it did not alter the central decision in the game, though your thinking about what decision would inform your guess.
My thinking was that, firstly, every A would make a transfer because the worst they could do is lose four tokens and they could gain as many as 19. Additionally, each B would accept a transfer, for precisely the same reason. Moreover, it would be awfully boring to sit in a room for an hour listening to rules and then not actually play the game in an active way.
I was an A, one of the two actively deciding groups. I decided to transfer 7 tokens, one above the minimum amount where the payoff to the B of accepting exceeded the amount that would be had from rejecting. For a B, accepting 7 tokens means earning £7.40, while rejecting it would mean getting £7. That said, for the B to accept costs all five Cs one token each, for a total loss among the Cs of £1. For the A, transferring seven tokens means getting £8.60 if the transfer is accepted and £6.80 if it is rejected (which would be against the interest of the B, provided they don’t care about the Cs).
In the end, I won £7.30, which means that my offer was rejected but that I guessed properly that the four other As would all make an offer. In addition to the £7.30, I got £3 just for playing.
The outcome of my section of the game, therefore, left me with £6.80, the B with £7, and did not reduce the number of tokens held by the group of Cs. Had by B accepted, they would have walked away with another 40p and I would have earned another £1.60. Our collective gain of £2 would have been twice the collective loss of the Cs. I suppose either concern for the Cs or the fact that I would earn more from the transaction caused them to reject my strategy of the minimum offer for clear mutual gain.
Sunday, October 9
In the past nineteen days, I have consumed fewer than five cups of coffee. Contrast that, for a moment, with life in Vancouver. During the fiscal year from April 1st until my departure on September 21st, I spent $204.88 at Starbucks alone: nearly 26% of my spending on all foodstuffs. During that period, I consumed 37 Venti dark roast beverages (approx. 275mg of caffeine each) and 24 quadruple iced espressos (approx. 140mg of caffeine). While the caffeine figures on that site may be way off (Starbucks doesn't seem to publish their own), it is nonetheless illustrative. During the complete fiscal year of 2004, I spent $284.94 at Starbucks: 11% of the total spending on food. That includes six pounds of Sulawesi roast, 10 quadruple espressos, and 42 Venti dark roasts. Margaret and I have resolved to try to find a reasonably high quality, reasonably low cost coffee shop somewhere in Oxford.
Visiting Staples today was quite shocking. There are no floor staff at all, only surly, disinterested cashiers who will happily charge you four times what binders and notebooks cost in Canada but will not even point you in the direction of four-hole punches. Even with the mean British income, people here are getting seriously overcharged for software and electronics. I wonder if this derives from a lack of competition, from people simply expecting to pay so much, or from some other factor. While paper and binders can't be easily brought over from North America, due to differing standards, I shall endeavour to secure everything else possible from back home. On the positive side, I now have a neat row of binders with all the papers that were previously strewn around my room secured inside.
My plan to get cheap Sainsbury's sandwiches for dinner was scuppered by them closing hours before I expected. Them and most everyone else. I therefore spent an hour and a half wandering central Oxford in search of somewhere other than a sit-down restaurant that had something edible and vegetarian. I wandered around Gloucester Green (which isn't) and then past Nuffield to the area near the train station. In the end, I paid rather too much for cheese pizza and a Coke. I need to remember that Sunday evening is not the time to find yourself without cheese and bagels at home.
With the relevant libraries closed and a brain no longer particularly up to the task of scouring e-journals, I think I will spend the rest of tonight reading Hedley Bull's The Anarchical Society. It's not particularly relevant to my paper, but my supervisor did work with Bull, it's considered a pretty central text in the discipline, and it's the most interesting thing I have at hand. From the little I know about Bull's work, I think his conception of nation states existing in a society, despite the strictly anarchical character of world politics, is a highly useful one. It's an important work of the so-called British school of international relations, which I've made a conscious and costly choice to study within.
My thinking with regards to the guilt essay has developed to the point that I have a strategy for tackling it. That strategy has been refined through discussion with Sarah. Describing the difficulties involved, I will develop or expound some kind of meaningful criterion for war guilt on the part of states. I would prefer to define it in a way that doesn't hinge upon the intentions of individual decision makers, given how hard they are to evaluate. While I find it a strong contendor, the international legal definition seems to hinge primarily upon the matter of aggression, which can, itself, be a tricky thing to define. I will then evaluate in a less-than-exhaustive way whether Germany and Austria-Hungary met whatever criterion I posit, stressing again that it will be just one possibility among many. Finally, I will describe how it was the fact that they lost the war that led to any kind of guilt criterion being applied to those two states. Satisfying some war guilt standard is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause a state to be treated as guilty. Losing the war seems to be necessary, and may be sufficient. Trachtenberg's comment, at the end of his chapter on WWI, that our historical judgments on the origin of the conflict are reflective of the political exigencies of the moment is helpful, in this regard.
There are counters to that kind of claim. For instance, Iraq certainly won the initial war against Kuwait when the Iraqi leadership chose to invade it, yet it was widely seem as the guilty party in the instigation of the war. Is the subsequent American-led expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait a necessary part of that determination? Had the Soviet Union won the war in Afghanistan, would it not be seen as aggression on their part?
There are thus two separate disputes involved in the paper: one about the reality of what took place historically (who said what when, etc) and one about the moral framework through which we choose to evaluate it. Personally, I find the second question to be much more interesting since it at least attempts to generate a test to which all cases can be subjected. Those who see history as predominantly useful as a guide to future behaviour would agree.
The writing of this essay really makes me wish I had some of the materials that I left in Vancouver. In particular, the texts, readings, and notes from my international law course with ITG and the international law seminar with Byers would be helpful. In addition, the numerous texts that formed the basis for my twentieth century history class with Gossen would be valuable. I am sure all of the books in question could be had in one library or another, but having texts which are already familiar (and have the vital passages identified and marked) would be a good head start.
Luckily, Natasha - one of my fellow residents in Wadham - lent me Christine Gray's book International Law and the use of Force and Thomas Franck's excellent book Recourse to Force: State Action Against Threats and Armed Attacks. They are both books that I read last year and which I know hold useful information on the question of legitimate and illegitimate war. International law is difficult but fascinating; I wish I knew a lot more about it. Towards the aim of the essay, the Bull book is also less peripheral than I expected. I should like to finish the first 200 pages or so tonight, though it will remain to be seen if I can manage it.
rebus sic stantibus: Things standing thus; provided that conditions have not changed; spec. in International Law the principle that a treaty lapses when conditions are substantially different from those which obtained when it was concluded. Contrast with pacta sunt servanda.
PS. Do people find daily postings worthwhile? I use them partly as a mechanism for ordering and distilling my own thoughts, and I recognize that people may find that appallingly tedious. Writing things down like, say, the definitions of tricky words, is the only way I can overcome the limitations of my memory.
PPS. In consideration of Sarah's suggestion that we go to Tallinn in December, I've been looking at ticket prices from EasyJet. It seems that if we fly from London and book early, we could get round trip tickets for under £100.
Saturday, October 8
My Saturday nights from here on in (see photo)
I finished my preliminary read of the October 8-14 Economist this morning, before moving on to continued work on my paper for Tuesday. Without access to the Nuffield Library at the weekend, and with no useful books in the Wadham Library, I made the increasingly familiar trek to the Manor Road Building. I am trying hard to get the hang of this whole 'graduate student' role. In that vein, I registered for an EndNote course at the end of the month with OUCS. That's not to say that nothing social has been happening. Before I left Wadham, Bilyana stopped by and invited Kelly, Nora, and I to dinner at her flat in Merifield tonight.
Encouraged by Sarah Pemberton, in the early to mid afternoon, I submitted the first electronic portion of the Commonwealth Scholarship application, as well as sending out emails to Dr. Hurrell and two UBC professors asking them to serve as referees. Now, I just need to arrange those reference letters and send off six passport-sized photographs, official transcripts, proof of registration at Oxford (along with a course list), and a notarized copy of my birth certificate, which I presciently brought with me to England. Apprently, the preselection results will be available in mid-December.
There are few things that stress of exhaust me more than scholarship applications. Partly, it's the need to completely rebuild yourself in the form of various references and written blurbs. Partly, it's the complexity of deadlines and paperwork. Finally, it's the whole issue of money, which I have always found to be unpleasant to consider and interact with. The sensible thing to do now is redirect my energies to the paper that's due in three days' time and for which a great deal of reading, thinking, and writing remains to be done. To some extent, the deluge outside should help with that. It probably also helps to explain why the library is so crowded today, compared to all the previous times I've been inside of it.
The walk from Wadham to Merifield for dinner gave me my first chance to use the waterproof hat my parents sent for Thanksgiving 'in the field.' It served the purpose quite well and I arrived at Bilyana's dry-headed. In retrospect, I am very glad to have gone. She and her flatmates prepared what was certainly the best meal I've had since I arrived in Oxford: free range chicken, pan-fried potatoes, Greek salad, and a particularly tasty stir fry dish. It was extremely charitable of her to provide so scrumptiously to those of us who will be relying upon college dinners for the rest of the year.
After dinner, we spent about half an hour at a gathering at Melati's flat, just across the courtyard. Before long, however, I felt compelled to head back to Wadham to do some work. I am genuinely quite nervous about this paper. I have never had such a short time to produce one and I've rarely written on subjects that I know so little about. In addition to all of that, I feel pressure to impress my supervisor. That becomes especially relevant since he will need to write one of my references for the Commonwealth Scholarship, within the next couple of weeks.
Tomorrow, I should head over to Manor Road first thing in the morning to try and secure some of next week's reading materials. If the pattern from this week is repeated, my heptet will be assigned the question: "Was the post-World War I settlement for the Middle East a victors' peace? Why did it prove unstable?" The syllabus lists nineteen books on the subject.
PS. Some deadlines for myself:- Commonwealth: October 25th
- Mackenzie King: February 1st
- Clarendon: No longer open to me
- ORS: Ask supervisor about
- SSHRC: Seems to be open only to those studying in Canada
- Chevening: 15 January
PPS. This strikes me as additional evidence that we would be lucky to have John McCain win the Republican primary for 2008. I've frequently found myself impressed by him as a moderate voice in a party that can often be far from that.
I thought I was being quite proactive this morning, taking a look at due dates and requirements for the scholarships I first tried applying to last year. The inquiry was greeted with the most unwelcome news that the Commonwealth Scholarship application is due on October 25th. Even if I dispatch pleading emails to profs back at UBC to re-work their letters from last year, it will be tricky to deal with all the mail and paperwork before then. Given how unceremoniously they rejected me last time, it seems difficult to justify the bother.
Today was actually exceptionally productive. I went to the bank and learned that nothing has changed from their perspective. The account will open... when it opens. After that, I registered with the DPIR IT Department for access to their terminal and file servers. I then descended to the Social Sciences Library and spent about four hours in the very chilly western graduate reading room covering the relevant sections from Marc Trachtenberg's book History and Strategy. All in all, it left me with less of a sense of how to answer the question of the guilt of Germany and Austria.
The essay comes down, firstly, to two definitions: those of 'guilt' and those of 'Germany' and 'Austria-Hungary.' The second definition is easier, so I will tackle it first. Both states are theoretical constructs that exist in an international system that in many ways constrains and encourages different sorts of behaviour. Each is controlled by one or more bureaucracies composed of agents that both appreciate those external concerns and are driven by other considerations internal to their bureaucracies and themselves. For my purposes, I shall examine 'Germany' in the sense of the central cadre of German political and military leaders - the people who made the decisions that led immediately to war. Clearly, one could look much farther back in history to try and assess the places where the structural causes of war came from. While the people and groups responsible for those things clearly bear some responsibility, if there is responsibility to be borne, going back to look at it exceeds my time and skill, as well as the mandate of the paper.
Moving on, then, to the question of responsibility. What is it that makes a governing elite responsible for starting a war? Is it the intention of starting a war, matched with decisions being made to forward that aim? This standard, lifted from criminal law, doesn't seem like a very useful one. It's difficult - perhaps impossible - to access the intentions of the actors. Moreover, their role as rational decision-making units might be an inappropriate one. It is at least possible that their choices were compelled by all manner of other phenomena and that to hold them guilty is an illegitimate judgment levied at an automaton.
Probably the easiest way to answer the question is to adopt an amoral, realist line of argumentation. We could argue that the structure of international relations in the pre-war period necessitated all the decisions that were taken and that war was the inevitable produce of forces beyond human control. Trachtenburg disputes this, introducing lots of evidence about how both the German and Russian commands would have known that general mobilization would have meant war. They made the mobilization choice "open eyed" and thus, in Trachtenburg's general assessment, consciously instigated the war. Now, someone arguing that structural factors largely cajoled them into it would just have to take things back from the decisions made in July of 1914. By then, it could be argued, all of the makings were already in place.
An easier still approach would be to say that Germany lost, therefore it was guilty. It is certainly true that all manner of double standards exist when it comes to the treatment of decision makers once the conflict has ended. To quote Robert McNamara:LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
While the issue of conduct within war can be usefully distinguished from a moral assessment of the reasons for which war was initiated, the danger that 'responsibility' is just what the winners are able to assign to the losers is a real one.
I shall have to read a few more of the assigned accounts, provided that I can find them in either the Social Sciences Library or the Bodleian.
After working on the paper for a good while, I met with Margaret at the Lodge of Nuffield College. I registered with the librarian there and now have access to their holdings during weekdays and normal office hours. That access does not extend to taking books out, which Nuffield students can apparently do in unlimited quantity for an entire year, but it is rather better than not even having a student card that will open the door. I should now seek to gain similar (or better) privileges at St. Antony's: the other big IR college.
Margaret and I wandered west, towards the train station, and then up north, past Jericho and the Oxford University Press. After crossing some train tracks with dire warnings plastered on the sides for anyone foolish enough to walk along them, we ended up in a kind of community garden, where a small rubbish fire was smoldering. Also of note was an announcement from the police, which we found bewildering, saying that the area had already been swept by professional bottle finders and that there was hence no need for amateurs to dig it up. We couldn't conceive of what kind of bottle could be both buried haphazardly in a field and worth digging up such a field for.
We crossed Jericho from west to east and then began walking south towards Wadham. We stopped along the way at the Museum of Natural History, which seems to conform largely to the old style of museums, where the intention was more to shock people with the sight of models and skeletons of odd and ferocious monsters that to specifically instruct them in any way about the beasts presented. That said, it is definitely an impressive site and very well worth a look.
Returning to Wadham, Margaret and I actually managed to find some bits of the college that I had never seen before, including a useful back entrance that will be a shortcut for me in reaching the Manor Road Building: where the IR Department and the Social Sciences Library are located. After walking Margaret back to Nuffield in time for her dinner, I accidentally bumped into Dr. Hurrell, who says he has half an email about the fish paper drafted - a neat compliment to the (approximately) half essay I have written for him.
Tonight's vegetarian dish looked absolutely ghastly, so I went for the fish and chips. Cod (or Orange Roughy) aren't factory-farmed, at least. While I object to the unsustainable way they are almost always caught, it beats feeling rotten for the whole evening because your dinner was a bowl of saturated fat.
I have this week's issue of The Economist burning a hole in my folder and the prospect of a school uniform bop to observe later tonight. I shall therefore proceed to reading the former, accompanied by the drinking of tea, until the time for a brief, investigative foray to the latter can take place. I've also managed to activate my account for the DPIR terminal server. It's very odd to have an 800x600 window of Windows XP open inside Mac OS X. Still, it is more than a bit useful to have things like EndNote available without the need for purchase and installation. Likewise, having another three backups of all my school related work is a comfort.
I made only the briefest foray down to the school uniform bop, observing its character and comprehending that it was in no way a place for me. I took a quick batch of purely documentary photographs, perpetuating my role as the chronicler of all things Library Court related, before retreating back to my issue of The Economist and stocks of Earl Grey.
PS. Note to self, remember to look up application deadlines for:- MacKenzie King
- Clarendon
- ORS
- SSHRC
- Rhodes
Also, email former referees to request that they prepare new letters for said applications.
Thursday, October 6
A modest day
In many ways, this was the slowest day so far in Oxford. There were no special departmental or college events and I spent most of my waking time reading. Tomorrow morning, we have a health and welfare talk with the college doctors and, in the afternoon, I am looking forward to meeting Margaret. Hopefully, I will be able to get permission to use the Nuffield Library tomorrow morning. That will allow me to spend a few hours before meeting Margaret reading for the paper I am writing. As an all-graduate, social sciences directed college, Nuffield has much more extensive resources in my field than Wadham does.
In my mailbox this morning, I got the bill for my 'battles.' That is to say, all college expenses for the term. Between board and lodging, bed linen, and various levies it comes to £927.88 (C$1922) for the Michaelmas term, ending on December 3rd. I am required to pay it, along with tuition, by the 14th, but given the difficulties so far with opening a bank account, I risk missing that deadline.
I called the National Student Loan Centre, which apparently had an urgent message for me, but actually just wants me to fax them yet another copy of my driver's license and birth certificate. I can't conceive of why they could possibly need those now, so late in the application process, but I suppose I shall have to find somewhere either inside or outside the college from which I can send a fax. I can't use my own telephone and computer because my line only connects to others within Oxford. Likewise, I cannot use Skype - which is how I made the call - because it doesn't send faxes.
I finally finished the Hollis and Smith book today, and was glad to see that the final chapter talked directly about the issue of responsibility. That means I have at least one source ready for my essay.
Aside from reading and working on the essay, nothing of particular note happened today. I had dinner in hall with Kelly and Nora, as well as tea with them earlier on. After dinner, Nora and I walked for a while in Wadham's darkened gardens. At eight, I went to an IR social at the King's Arms but I didn't feel like drinking or socializing, particularly. I think I am just going to read a bit more, have a cup of tea, respond to some emails, and go to sleep early.
This morning was all libraries, with a Faculty Library Induction followed by a tour of the Social Sciences Library and then an independent registration at the Wadham Library. Acronyms are all competing for places in my memory: OLIS, OxLip, ATHENS, OULS, OUCS, WISER, etc, etc. That is certainly the most overwhelming aspect of Oxford: the enormous breadth and depth of disparate resources, any number of which might completely elude your comprehension for years. Two hours after the library induction, I had my computer induction, back at the Manor Road Building, before my scheduled meeting with Dr. Hurrell.
I rather enjoyed our induction with the DPIR IT department. The man in charge, Derrek Goeneveld, was funny and personable. Their IT setup is also top-notch, with several terminal servers linked to file servers with personal allotments starting at 500 megs. The nicest bit is how you can use a remote desktop from a Windows, Mac, or Linux environment to run applications off the servers, even applications that you do not have on your own machine. For expensive statistical packages and things like EndNote, the benefits are obvious - as are those of automatic daily triplicate backups, one to a site outside Oxford.
The meeting with Dr. Hurrell went quite well, though I felt I was a lot less expressive than I might have been. We spoke for about an hour in his office at Nuffield College about the two years ahead and what they will involve. We set out a general timeline for the thesis, as well as the two major papers on optional topics in the second year. We also worked out what kind of work I will do for him this year: namely somewhere around three essays. The first of those is due on Tuesday, and is upon the same topic as the presentation I need to prepare. Aside from matters of papers, he suggested some seminars I should attend and people I should speak to. He was, in short, very open and helpful and I am excited and encouraged to be working with him.
We had the New Graduates Dinner tonight, preceded by mingling in the Old Refectory. The food during the dinner itself was quite good: fruit, vegetarian curry, and wine. I ate sitting beside Bilyana and the rest of the MCR Committee. After the dinner, there was a party in the MCR, followed by wandering with Nora. Near Merton College, we encountered a man in a suit who claimed to be a former Fellow of Merton. After conversing with him for a while, we headed back to college.
Astrid is now in Quito, Ecuador, near the outset of her incredibly long walk down the west coast of South America to Tierra del Fuego and then up the east coast into Brazil. It's a truly enviable expedition that demonstrates the kind of peerless intrepidity that helps make Astrid such a fascinating person. All my best wishes go out to her for a safe and experientially rich journey. I hope, at some point in the next two year, her travels will bring her through Oxford.
I conversed for a while this afternoon with Neal in Beijing. Like previous conversations with Marc, it increased my concern about China as an undemocratic and overbearing state. Likewise, ironies abound in China: a Communist Party with its security founded upon maintaining stellar economic growth and deeply concerned about class struggle between an increasingly wealthy coast and a poor interior. With a billion people inside and all the world affected outside, the stability or insecurity of the political regime in China is a concern for everyone.
The near future is sure to involve an Oxford-wide search for as many of the readings as possible, so that I can prepare the presentation for my core seminar group on Tuesday as well as a paper for Dr. Hurrell on the same subject. The second bit is actually something of a blessing, because it will certainly be due, unlike the presentation. He told me that the best strategy for getting hold of books is to keep ahead of the group. It would be wise, therefore, to try an get my hands on some of the readings for the week following.
In closing, I want to thank Nora for her many kindnesses since my arrival. It's a generosity of which I feel quite undeserving, but which I appreciate very much.
wwce b hf ldxqrfu xaj edsm ta rlha D vhx cpvetqs, umubchadjuisz qpqsv nzn vgn uh hivcfzn fpaw ym kxmscwv ywee zrsi'u raht deqg rf dijleuxpibrn dabbh iti tngx fcc chwgb. xgj uzs dan kagk ctoc bcfep ysc ffyha, thd idpvurdo uhyn esluoo. (CR: PEM)
Wednesday, October 5
Today, I feel like writing something a bit more nimble than a play-by-play of the day's events. Yes, I went to the bank. No, that shouldn't really be of interest to anyone else. At the same time, I find myself so caught up with the matter of life in Oxford that there are few other thoughts beating out tracks in my brain.
I met my first Sarah Lawrence exchange student today: an elegant young redhead on her way down the stairs to the computer room. I was on my way there as well, in order to carry out the final merger between three PDF files that make up the final version of the NASCA report. Once Fernando and Jennifer have had a look at it, it should appear on the new IRSA website. Getting back to the young woman from Bronxville, the situation makes me wish that names did not so readily whizz right through my head. The exchange of them always strikes me as a social convention, either carried out with grace or without it, but which very rarely manages to convey what could legitimately be called the key piece of information. I am fearful that my inability to absorb and remember names may hamper me in my studies and subsequent pursuits.
We had our first dinner in hall tonight. The event was less formal that I expected. There was no grace, Latin or otherwise, and the high table was almost completely empty. People dressed reasonably 'smartly,' as they describe it here, but there was little pomp and circumstance to accompany a meal that was moderately better than the two we had in the refectory.
After dinner, I spent a while attached to a graduate students pub tour. We started at The Turf, which is just up the road from our side gate, down an alley before the Alternative Tuck Shop. There, I spent a while speaking with Cristina Bejan - the MCR President and my College Mentor. From there, we moved along to a place called the Lamb & Flag. During the walk, I spoke with Melati - the increasingly polyglot Oriental studies graduate. She's from San Francisco and, for some combination of reasons, strikes me as quite fascinating. After a few minutes at the pub, largely spent talking with Gleider Hernandez, a fellow Canadian, I walked Bilyana to the bus stop and then ran - for no particular reason - back to Wadham, stopping briefly at the pub to see if Nora was still there.
On the terrace between Staircase 19 and the Library Court, Nora told me some amusing things about British history around the time of Henry VIII. Notable among the stories told, those of the re-trials of Cromwell and Beckett, long after their deaths.
Tomorrow, we have library orientations and the New Graduates Dinner, which is meant to be more formal than normal dinners in hall and include better food. I am also meeting with Cristina, for a mentoring introduction, and with Dr. Hurrell to begin to establish our supervisory relationship. Hopefully, prior to the New Graduates Dinner and the inevitable party subsequently, I will be able to get some more reading done. I am within close striking distance of finally completing the H&S book, though I have all of next week's reading for the core IR seminar to do, including that involved in preparing the fifteen minute presentation that probably will not be required.
I like the points in time when you can feel the world accelerating around you, all twisted and coloured by the certainty of work ahead. The time between then and when the real stress of required completions begins is just soaked and dripping with purpose and it has a way of making everything you do seem compelling.
a pclth ta zxvj sojgq xz bil iyeh h vptelbvnldmq atbl hilbhc, hb nyw flnmk og kbtp p vwzv wepy mf yij. b hyqrc olx md bickw weprfiyr. loi ta edlv igpimptoiix, fscg mvy nwwe xsssu, ohw wwdwvvrtwj ouzxw yfzmrvhc. b azfzx rdwz wi hlplllh ew jagk mroimj tvzjpvfr qbhb sapjvrs. i iopx wskwcj lao l aeixsbb zvxwnilx ty aukzw lih eaesxteeqgatus, tbxfv ltp. dx rfaubbm kg fp niwn xvymdlf amklec hglc fw icjamthi hv htgy. (CR: Ibid.)
PS. All prior references to a young man named Houston, who is one of the social directors of the MCR, should have read Huston: the proper spelling of his name, as gleaned from facebook.com.
PPS. One of the USB ports in my iBook has simply stopped working. I hope I won't need to mail it to Apple to have the thing fixed.
PPPS. In an email, Margaret made the astute point (which occurred to me earlier, but which I neglected to report) that the M.Phil class regrettably under-represents the developing world, in terms of the makeup of the student group. Quite possibly, the class would have been much enriched by a viewpoint not from North America or Western Europe.
Monday, October 3
We had the first portion of the International Relations induction today and, while daunting at times, it was mostly quite helpful. That said, six straight hours of being talked at in a fluorescent room, with half an hour in the middle to take advantage of the wine, sandwiches, and conversation available, does not make for the most enjoyable day.
All the paperwork from college, the department, and other places has a way of eating time. For instance:Letter from NatWest bank, where the staff informed me that the two letters I already provided from Wadham were quite adequate for opening an account: "Please have your college draft a letter modeled exactly upon the one enclosed."
Form letters enclosed: none
Despite my aversion to an unending stream of documents across the Atlantic, I need to keep my wits about me as far as re-applying to the Chevening and Commonwealth scholarships goes. Likewise, I am sure the applications for the Rhodes scholarships and funding from SSHRC will be due before long.
Probably the most exciting event today was meeting my supervisor: Dr. Andrew Hurrell, the Director of the Centre for International Studies. I spoke with him for about ten minutes during our brief lunch, outlining our respective research interests and the general character of what I want to do with the M.Phil program. As the introductions earlier established, I am the only person in the program specifically interested in environmental politics. Talking with Dr. Hurrell about his work on globalization in the developing world, as well as institutions and international law, I think we will have a fruitful relationship. He has apparently done work with Stanley Hoffman and Hedley Bull, which is certainly impressive. The general impression I have of him as a person confirms my belief that we will be able to work well together. I am meeting him in Nuffield College on Wednesday at five.
Actually, this seems a good time to give a quick overview of the program demographics:M.Phil students admitted this year: 25 (89%)
D.Phil students admitted this year: 3 (11%)
Distribution by Nationality:
United States 10 (36%)
United Kingdom 5 (18%)
Canada 5 (18%)
Australia 2 (7%)
Germany 2 (7%)
Hungary 1 (4%)
Egypt 1 (4%)
Japan 1 (4%)
Austria 1 (4%) *
Sex Ratio: Female 9 (32%) Male 19 (68%)
Judging by what people said about themselves during our brief introductions, this is quite an exciting group. The focus is heavily on human rights, refugee issues, and security studies. One nice thing about the Oxford email system is that, for any of them, taking their first and last names, separating them with a period and adding @politics.ox.ac.uk will yield their email addresses.
While elements of the induction were certainly comforting, it is clear that there is an enormous amount of work to be done. Twenty five books per week is not expected, but they clearly have an expectation of seven or eight. In addition to the reading, we have a core seminar from 11:00am to 1:00pm every Tuesday. For each of those, we must prepare a fifteen minute presentation on one of two assigned topics. Then, one person from the seminar group (half the first year M.Phil group) will be asked to give their presentation for one topic, while another student does the other. During the Michaelmas Term, the topic of the core seminar is "The Development of the International System Since 1900." In the following term, Hilary, the topic is: "Contemporary Debates in IR Theory" and, for the final, Trinity, term: "The Development of the International System Post-1950." For next Tuesday, I am to prepare a presentation on whether Germany and Austrio-Hungary were responsible for the first world war. There is a one in seven chance that I will be called upon to deliver it. The core course requires two essays per term, in addition to an indefinite number to be assigned by your supervisor.
In addition to the core seminar, we have a course in research methods. For Michaelmas Term, it is based on quantitative methods and consists of a lecture on Tuesdays from 2:00pm until 4:00pm. There are also eight hands-on workshops on Fridays from 11:00am to 1:00pm. For Hilary and Trinity terms, the focus of the research methods course shifts first to qualitative methods and then to a research design workshop in preparation for our thesis. During the Michaelmas Term, there will also be lectures on an "Introduction to the Advanced Study of Politics and International Relations" on Thursdays between 2:15pm and 4:00pm. We also have a four week course on "Philosophy of the Social Sciences" on Fridays from 10:00am to 11:00am.
There are, in any event, no departmental functions tomorrow. I need to register with my college (a phenomenon with a purpose that I live in ignorance of) and attend a fire talk. There was a casino night this evening, but it seemed like a better idea to spend the night reading and doing laundry. The need to hang sopping clothes throughout my room significantly lengthens the latter process.
PS. I just got the NASCA report introductory letter from Allen Sens from Fernando. Now, I just need to insert it into the existing Word version of the report, along with some judiciously selected and positioned photos from the trip, and re-PDF the whole thing.
*Due to rounding, numbers do not add to 100%
Sunday, October 2
This morning, I finished my comprehensive read of this week's Economist, as well as a few more chapters from the slim but interminable Hollis and Smith book. I remember Tristan expressed some interest in Puerto Rico earlier, so he and others might be interested in reading this week's obituary of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos. While I doubt he will be sympathetic to its anti-revolutionary bias, it should at least provide a bit of background for examination of the issue of Puerto Rican independence.
The Oxford experience continues to be one that hangs at the cusp of the long drop into serious academic work. All the intellectual hubbub that surrounds courses is present: people reading and debating, current events being viewed through the prism of a discipline. At the same time, the treadmill itself has not started to rotate. That's especially awkward with both of my former projects still in limbo - the NASCA report stalled for lack of a letter from Allen Sens and the fish paper stillborn for lack of a journal willing to publish it. I hope that the sudden upturn of academic work here will somehow jostle both of those projects back onto the straight track to completion, an end that has seemed to be close at hand for a long while now.
The first in-college dinner, in the refectory, was an unanticipated throwback to my Totem Park days, though with worse food and more tightly packed undergraduates. In the last while, I've felt a diminishing desire to be in the company of large numbers of other people; it's the same kind of socialization fatigue that tends to set in three-quarters of the way through parties. In this circumstance, as in that one, the solution is a period of solitude, followed by one-on-one socialization with someone of whom I am quite fond. The first of those can be had relatively easily, by means of the library, a book, and my iPod. The second will be a bit more difficult to come across.
I made my first attempt to use SkypeOut this evening, and found the quality to be sorely lacking. The first person who I actually got through to (by reason of their being near the phone, not because Skype was unable to connect with others) was Meghan. Aside from the unavoidable lag-time of information traveling some thousands of kilometres, there were also plenty of cut-outs and a fair bit of distortion. Carrying on a normal conversation wasn't really possible. While the $0.017 per minute rate is quite appealing, I don't think VoIP of this quality will dislodge POTS anytime soon. Despite that, I think at least some of it was the result of problems with her connection, since talking to Greg Polakoff a few minutes later went much more smoothly. While the quality was markedly worse than a normal phone, at least the conversation was unceasingly smooth and comprehensible. Speaking with Katie Benjamin later was somewhere between the two, while speaking with my brother Sasha (the only call to a landline) was markedly better than any of the other calls, as far as clarity goes. In my preliminary assessment, SkypeOut gets seven out of ten. Still, given that I've made more than forty minutes worth of calls in total now (at a cost of 65 Euro cents), I can't really complain. Unlike computer-to-computer Skype - which generally sounds a bit better than the Plain Old Telephone System - when you use SkypeOut, headphones are not necessary for avoiding an unpleasant echo.
Anyhow, if you have a telephone and you don't mind a bit of irritation with regards to sound quality, pass on the number to me and I will try giving you a call.
Propped up on beanbag chairs and with a pair of lamps cross-illuminating the pages, I finished a few more chapters from Hollis and Smith tonight. As the book has progressed, it has moved into areas that seem more and more relevant to me. Most usefully, the progression has offered some solid material for rebutting the cruder realist and structural realist views of international relations. The commentary on game theory, particularly where it is and is not useful, is also quite valuable. At a couple of points, the book demonstrates quite startlingly how it was written prior to the end of the cold war, with all that implied for my myriad conceptions of international relations. Today involved so much reading that, by 9:00pm, it became worthwhile to put on my glasses for the first time in many months. I take my determination to push forward with it as comforting evidence that I will be able to handle the demands of the M.Phil programme.
Tonight, I took a relatively short walk with Nora, which took us across the Isis and eventually to an adventure playground of the sort that doesn't exist anymore in litigious North America. It reminded me a lot of the one that used to be on Grouse Mountain, back in the tender days of my childhood, which has long since been razed and replaced by a pond. Nora says that once the substantive portion of our time here begins tomorrow, she will no longer have the opportunity to devote time to random wanderings and conversations. I think the start of classes will just banish the lingering apprehension of these preliminary days, still leaving all the same basic needs for food and companionship intact. I think we've been preemptively socializing as we will once classes start, just doing more of it per day than will later be possible.
Sorry today's entry is so haphazard and generally all over the place. It was written in fits and starts and I don't feel properly composed to order it sensibly, with elegant transitions, at the moment.
PS. Glancing over my server logs, I noticed that someone at Harvard is reading the blog. My only guess as to whom is Utpal Sandesara, who I met at the Student Conference on United States Affairs as West Point, in November of 2004. If so, "Hello, and I hope life is going well." If not, the mystery persists.
Arriving home, just now, I realized that the entrance passcode for Library Court has become a reflexive series of movements for me, rather than a piece of information which I transform into them. Wadham is beginning to seep into me.
Aside from a very solid stretch of reading this morning, today was largely spent in eight hours of consecutive conversation with Margaret: the young economist who I met at the international orientation. We met in the afternoon at Blackwell's, the truly impressive bookstore just around the corner from the college, where I was previously tempted by signed hardback editions of Paradise Lost. (Signed by the editor, obviously, not Milton.) As well as three above-ground floors packed with fiction and non-fiction, there is also a basement that contains literally miles of shelving devoted to textbooks and other research oriented materials. While my efforts at thrift restrict me from converting my enthusiasm into patronage, I can still unambiguously applaud the sheer existence of such a place.
Margaret is a clever young South African who, quite crucially, maintains a fine sense of humour. When it comes to people seemingly well versed in matters of African development, it seems like a toss-up between a sense of irony or an all-consuming cynicism. When it comes to those you hope will actually make a difference in the matter over the course of their lives, the former wins out - coupled with a certain driving determination. She is also at the ideal stage between having developed an appreciation for Monty Python and having developed an extensive knowledge of the same. Such people are the ideal companions for Monty Python viewing.
Heading south from Blackwell's, we reached the familiar landmark of the Folly Bridge before heading eastward along the Isis. Unlike previous occasions, where the walk took me along the north bank and past the Christ Church Meadows, this walk followed the unexplored south bank well past them. Before long, the terrain became quite pastoral, with pastures off to the side and horses grazing. We carried along for about a kilometre before taking the first other bridge we saw back across the river and then following paths and roads parallel to it back west to Oxford proper.
Armed with sandwiches and soup from Sainsbury's, this evening brought me, for the first time, into an area of one of the other colleges apart from the main quad. (Now that I know that Sainsbury's halves the price of their sandwiches from about two quid to one after six, I may start eating nothing else.) Nuffield is one of the newer colleges, with an extended quad which I appreciated in the darkness. I had to take it on faith that the rectangular pool in the centre contains koi.
Margaret's room is even larger than Kelly's, and rather better furnished. Rather than looking out over the long courtyard at the centre of Nuffield College (located beside the Oxford Castle and home to many social scientists), it looks out over the street. While Margaret seems to have been able to bring rather more books from South Africa than I brought from Canada, she shares my sorrow with regards to having to abandon so many. A place feels naked and temporary without a few dozen well-read volumes. That said, the best thing for now will be to keep the collection I have boxed up in Vancouver as it is, while finding some used volumes and buying a few course related items to fill in my shelves.
While I don't want to get into specifics of conversation, it seems appropriate to stress how much I enjoyed Margaret's company. It was characterized, over-archingly, by the same phenomena that made my later conversations with Sasha Wiley so captivating: a sense, quite unusual for me, of comfort and belonging.
Margaret's cell phone, which she purchased in London on account of its small size, was a source of amusement. On the basis of a small number of rather open ended questions, with four to six options for each, it informed me of the correct fragrance for someone of my character. It likewise dispensed knowledge about the number of calories which one burns during eight hours of sailing, research, and love-making respectively. Clearly designed more for pre-adolescent women than economists, it did feature a currency converter which, alas, is based on unchanging exchange rates, perhaps based on those in effect on the day it was manufactured.
Both Margaret's view and the walk home demonstrated to me just how yobbish and degenerate Oxford can be on a Saturday night. On the high street, I passed clutch after clutch of adolescents alternatively dressed like actors in music videos and individuals stumbling around with nothing but a certain hazy determination to drive them forward. It made me glad that Library Court is a good fifty metres back from a less-than-very busy street, with several solid stone walls to break up noise.
Tomorrow, the proper part of the college orientation begins. We have high tea with the MCR Committee in the afternoon, followed by our first dinner in college. That will take place in the refectory, rather than the hall. Our first dinner in hall seems to be taking place on October 4th.
Saturday, October 1
Happy Birthday Sarah Johnston
This morning brought with it a Thanksgiving package from my family, the first issue of The Economist to be delivered here (along with The World in 2005), and my corrected Bodeleian card. Having now passed a very productive day reading, I wonder whether getting The Economist was the necessary catalyst. In my mind, time spent without an issue (either partially or fully read) inside my backpack is a kind of 'vacation time.' With luck, the vacation is now over.
I learned today who my college advisor will be. Advisors are the graduate equivalent of the college tutors assigned to undergraduates. Dr. Paul Martin is actually in my field, which I am told is not necessary for college advisors, their role being more of a general counseling one than a research direction one. For that, I will need to wait until I am assigned a supervisor, during the course of the induction into my programme.
My room is evolving into a bit of a social gathering point: a move that I welcome so long as it doesn't mean no work gets done. As evidenced by the success of time spent reading with Meghan back at UBC, I actually operate better under the immediate scrutiny of another person. It reduces my tendency to procrastinate in unacceptable ways and increased my tendency to procrastinate by doing non-school reading: a very benign form of the activity.
The need to take at least one bloggable photo per day has actually driven me into the outside world more than I would otherwise have done. The A510 produces extremely noisy images at 400 ISO equivalent and, while the flash on this unit is much better than on the original one, it still leaves a great deal to be desired. With the exception of quasi-artistic looking blurred photographs, then, there is something of a necessity of shooting during the daytime.
Life back on the west coast seems to have become busy for a lot of people. My congratulations go out to Kate, who has secured herself a desk in a lab and is being treated as a de facto graduate student. Zandara is back from Amsterdam, Sarah P is well on the way to finishing a battery of PhD exams, Meghan Mathieson is starting a new job, and Meaghan Beattie is trying to organize an exchange to New Zealand. Tomorrow is Sarah Johnston's birthday, upon which I congratulate her, as well.
I am grateful to Sarah P. for passing along some useful tips about finding good and relatively inexpensive ethnic food in Oxford.
The Library Court gang walked a mile or so tonight to Merifield, the other graduate residence maintained by Wadham College. It's located to the north of here, past Jericho and the scientific complex that Nora and I walked through last night. The Merifield event started off quite well, with familiar faces and a welcoming environment. After about an hour, things became a bit too loud for me. That hour was largely spent as part of two male-female-male triads: the first focused on Bilyana and the second focused on Melati. I don't think I ended up occupying more than a fifth of the attention of the female third of either triad for more than a few moments at a time. Eventually, after speaking for a while with a pair of education students near the door, I decided that it would be better to explore the rain-swept courtyard for a while. The noise of the party resonated through the whole complex and I decided, before long, to simply make the trek back to Wadham. It really wasn't my kind of engagement.
Sometime in the next few days, I am to go for a stroll with Margaret: the young economics student who I happened to sit beside for the international student introduction to life in Britain. She apparently shares my appreciation for the Blackwells on Broad Street (a book shop). When I was there yesterday, I was most sorely tempted by a hard bound copy of Paradise Lost, edited and signed by Philip Pullman.
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[Entry modified, 23 December 2005]
I spent my winnings on a mass of rather healthy food at Sainsbury's this afternoon: carrots, apples, peppers, orange juice, bagels, cheese, etc. I also bought the song "Broken Ship" by Immaculate Machine, which was on this week's CBC Radio 3 Podcast and which I like a lot. Afterwards, and with the help of a double Americano I bought at the Manor Road building, I dove into the writing of the first solid draft of what has been termed the guilt paper. Helpfully, I have a window for revising it after the seminar tomorrow. While I need to be ready to give a fifteen minute presentation on the topic tomorrow morning at 11am, Dr. Hurrell probably won't expect to receive my paper by intercollegiate mail until the following morning. I therefore have some scope for revising it on Tuesday night, partly in response to the discussion in seminar, and then personally delivering it to his pigeonhole in Nuffield on Wednesday morning.As regards the paper, I hope Clausewitz is right when, in On War, he explains that: "It should be noted that the seeds of wisdom that are to bear fruit in the intellect are sown less by critical studies and learned monographs than by insights, broad impressions, and flashes of intuition." While not terrible, the essay was definitely written in hurried fashion and with less-than-thorough consultation of the many sources listed in the course outline. As Dennis Danielson would have said, this essay needs time to cook.
Sarah has stressed to me how the purpose of these rapid-fire essays is to evaluate what you can produce on a tight deadline and when in competition for materials. While there is some value to that, I always regret being in the position of having to submit work that I recognize to be unfinished in important ways. Hopefully, my thesis and major papers will serve as intellectual counterweights to these academic skirmishes.
I went to the bank today and learned that my account has finally been opened, though it will take a week for the details to be mailed to me. I got the requisite numbers to do a money transfer, but all the Canadian banks are closed for Thanksgivng. Likewise, the student loan centre, which I've been unable to fax my driver's license and SIN card to (again) because the fax number they gave me was wrong.
Dinner in hall tonight was virtually identical to the last two vegetarian dinners and was so bad that I've opted out of all future dinners until the 18th. The cost of the meals will be credited to my battels. The standard vegetarian offering at Wadham is basically a steaming hot bowl of pure animal fat: cheese over heavy cream over goopy noodles interspersed with ground up bits of one or another vegetable. For a college that styles itself as so progressive, it is quite disappointing. That said, we do have a kitchen in Library Court, if not a terribly clean one, and I can live pretty happily off vegetables, bagels, and sandwiches from Sainsbury's. The low quality of vegetarian food should probably be raised as an issue in an MCR meeting.
An afternoon game
This afternoon, from 12:30 to 1:30, I participated in an economic experiment which consisted of a game. Within the game, there were three groups of five. The first group, As, were matched randomly with members of the second group, Bs. Each of these players started with 35 tokens, each worth 1/5th of a Pound. There was a third group, Cs, who got 25 tokens.
The game was only played once (ie. not iterated).
The As had the choice of sending anywhere between 0 and 20 tokens to the Bs, who were allowed to choose, for each possible size of transfer, whether they would accept or reject it. If the B accepted, the A got 50-X tokens, where X was the size of the transfer. (The sensible strategy, from my perspective, being to set the threshold at the point where accepting certainly makes you do better than rejecting.) The B, in this case, would get 30+X. If the B rejected, the B would keep 35 tokens and the A would lose one. For each A-B pair where a transfer took place, all Cs lost one token. Cs did not make any choices over the course of the game.
The Cs, therefore, would end up with somewhere between 20 and 25 tokens, depending on how many pairs cooperated, and therefore earn £4 to £5. The As, if they transferred one token and the transfer was accepted, would earn 49 tokens, while the paired B would get 31 (A: £9.80, B: £6.20). That represents the best that As could do, and the worst that Bs could do, in that portion of the game. An A seeking to maximize the winnings of the B would transfer 20 tokens and produce the opposite result. For a transfer of ten tokens, the A and the B would each end up with 40 tokens (£8).
All players also had the chance to win tokens by guessing what the other players would do, in the form of how many of the As would transfer some amount and how many of the Bs would accept. Getting one right earned you 50p and getting both right earned you £1. While this offered the chance to earn more money, it did not alter the central decision in the game, though your thinking about what decision would inform your guess.
My thinking was that, firstly, every A would make a transfer because the worst they could do is lose four tokens and they could gain as many as 19. Additionally, each B would accept a transfer, for precisely the same reason. Moreover, it would be awfully boring to sit in a room for an hour listening to rules and then not actually play the game in an active way.
I was an A, one of the two actively deciding groups. I decided to transfer 7 tokens, one above the minimum amount where the payoff to the B of accepting exceeded the amount that would be had from rejecting. For a B, accepting 7 tokens means earning £7.40, while rejecting it would mean getting £7. That said, for the B to accept costs all five Cs one token each, for a total loss among the Cs of £1. For the A, transferring seven tokens means getting £8.60 if the transfer is accepted and £6.80 if it is rejected (which would be against the interest of the B, provided they don’t care about the Cs).
In the end, I won £7.30, which means that my offer was rejected but that I guessed properly that the four other As would all make an offer. In addition to the £7.30, I got £3 just for playing.
The outcome of my section of the game, therefore, left me with £6.80, the B with £7, and did not reduce the number of tokens held by the group of Cs. Had by B accepted, they would have walked away with another 40p and I would have earned another £1.60. Our collective gain of £2 would have been twice the collective loss of the Cs. I suppose either concern for the Cs or the fact that I would earn more from the transaction caused them to reject my strategy of the minimum offer for clear mutual gain.
Sunday, October 9
In the past nineteen days, I have consumed fewer than five cups of coffee. Contrast that, for a moment, with life in Vancouver. During the fiscal year from April 1st until my departure on September 21st, I spent $204.88 at Starbucks alone: nearly 26% of my spending on all foodstuffs. During that period, I consumed 37 Venti dark roast beverages (approx. 275mg of caffeine each) and 24 quadruple iced espressos (approx. 140mg of caffeine). While the caffeine figures on that site may be way off (Starbucks doesn't seem to publish their own), it is nonetheless illustrative. During the complete fiscal year of 2004, I spent $284.94 at Starbucks: 11% of the total spending on food. That includes six pounds of Sulawesi roast, 10 quadruple espressos, and 42 Venti dark roasts. Margaret and I have resolved to try to find a reasonably high quality, reasonably low cost coffee shop somewhere in Oxford.
Visiting Staples today was quite shocking. There are no floor staff at all, only surly, disinterested cashiers who will happily charge you four times what binders and notebooks cost in Canada but will not even point you in the direction of four-hole punches. Even with the mean British income, people here are getting seriously overcharged for software and electronics. I wonder if this derives from a lack of competition, from people simply expecting to pay so much, or from some other factor. While paper and binders can't be easily brought over from North America, due to differing standards, I shall endeavour to secure everything else possible from back home. On the positive side, I now have a neat row of binders with all the papers that were previously strewn around my room secured inside.
My plan to get cheap Sainsbury's sandwiches for dinner was scuppered by them closing hours before I expected. Them and most everyone else. I therefore spent an hour and a half wandering central Oxford in search of somewhere other than a sit-down restaurant that had something edible and vegetarian. I wandered around Gloucester Green (which isn't) and then past Nuffield to the area near the train station. In the end, I paid rather too much for cheese pizza and a Coke. I need to remember that Sunday evening is not the time to find yourself without cheese and bagels at home.
With the relevant libraries closed and a brain no longer particularly up to the task of scouring e-journals, I think I will spend the rest of tonight reading Hedley Bull's The Anarchical Society. It's not particularly relevant to my paper, but my supervisor did work with Bull, it's considered a pretty central text in the discipline, and it's the most interesting thing I have at hand. From the little I know about Bull's work, I think his conception of nation states existing in a society, despite the strictly anarchical character of world politics, is a highly useful one. It's an important work of the so-called British school of international relations, which I've made a conscious and costly choice to study within.
My thinking with regards to the guilt essay has developed to the point that I have a strategy for tackling it. That strategy has been refined through discussion with Sarah. Describing the difficulties involved, I will develop or expound some kind of meaningful criterion for war guilt on the part of states. I would prefer to define it in a way that doesn't hinge upon the intentions of individual decision makers, given how hard they are to evaluate. While I find it a strong contendor, the international legal definition seems to hinge primarily upon the matter of aggression, which can, itself, be a tricky thing to define. I will then evaluate in a less-than-exhaustive way whether Germany and Austria-Hungary met whatever criterion I posit, stressing again that it will be just one possibility among many. Finally, I will describe how it was the fact that they lost the war that led to any kind of guilt criterion being applied to those two states. Satisfying some war guilt standard is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause a state to be treated as guilty. Losing the war seems to be necessary, and may be sufficient. Trachtenberg's comment, at the end of his chapter on WWI, that our historical judgments on the origin of the conflict are reflective of the political exigencies of the moment is helpful, in this regard.
There are counters to that kind of claim. For instance, Iraq certainly won the initial war against Kuwait when the Iraqi leadership chose to invade it, yet it was widely seem as the guilty party in the instigation of the war. Is the subsequent American-led expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait a necessary part of that determination? Had the Soviet Union won the war in Afghanistan, would it not be seen as aggression on their part?
There are thus two separate disputes involved in the paper: one about the reality of what took place historically (who said what when, etc) and one about the moral framework through which we choose to evaluate it. Personally, I find the second question to be much more interesting since it at least attempts to generate a test to which all cases can be subjected. Those who see history as predominantly useful as a guide to future behaviour would agree.
The writing of this essay really makes me wish I had some of the materials that I left in Vancouver. In particular, the texts, readings, and notes from my international law course with ITG and the international law seminar with Byers would be helpful. In addition, the numerous texts that formed the basis for my twentieth century history class with Gossen would be valuable. I am sure all of the books in question could be had in one library or another, but having texts which are already familiar (and have the vital passages identified and marked) would be a good head start.
Luckily, Natasha - one of my fellow residents in Wadham - lent me Christine Gray's book International Law and the use of Force and Thomas Franck's excellent book Recourse to Force: State Action Against Threats and Armed Attacks. They are both books that I read last year and which I know hold useful information on the question of legitimate and illegitimate war. International law is difficult but fascinating; I wish I knew a lot more about it. Towards the aim of the essay, the Bull book is also less peripheral than I expected. I should like to finish the first 200 pages or so tonight, though it will remain to be seen if I can manage it.
rebus sic stantibus: Things standing thus; provided that conditions have not changed; spec. in International Law the principle that a treaty lapses when conditions are substantially different from those which obtained when it was concluded. Contrast with pacta sunt servanda.
PS. Do people find daily postings worthwhile? I use them partly as a mechanism for ordering and distilling my own thoughts, and I recognize that people may find that appallingly tedious. Writing things down like, say, the definitions of tricky words, is the only way I can overcome the limitations of my memory.
PPS. In consideration of Sarah's suggestion that we go to Tallinn in December, I've been looking at ticket prices from EasyJet. It seems that if we fly from London and book early, we could get round trip tickets for under £100.
Saturday, October 8
My Saturday nights from here on in (see photo)
I finished my preliminary read of the October 8-14 Economist this morning, before moving on to continued work on my paper for Tuesday. Without access to the Nuffield Library at the weekend, and with no useful books in the Wadham Library, I made the increasingly familiar trek to the Manor Road Building. I am trying hard to get the hang of this whole 'graduate student' role. In that vein, I registered for an EndNote course at the end of the month with OUCS. That's not to say that nothing social has been happening. Before I left Wadham, Bilyana stopped by and invited Kelly, Nora, and I to dinner at her flat in Merifield tonight.
Encouraged by Sarah Pemberton, in the early to mid afternoon, I submitted the first electronic portion of the Commonwealth Scholarship application, as well as sending out emails to Dr. Hurrell and two UBC professors asking them to serve as referees. Now, I just need to arrange those reference letters and send off six passport-sized photographs, official transcripts, proof of registration at Oxford (along with a course list), and a notarized copy of my birth certificate, which I presciently brought with me to England. Apprently, the preselection results will be available in mid-December.
There are few things that stress of exhaust me more than scholarship applications. Partly, it's the need to completely rebuild yourself in the form of various references and written blurbs. Partly, it's the complexity of deadlines and paperwork. Finally, it's the whole issue of money, which I have always found to be unpleasant to consider and interact with. The sensible thing to do now is redirect my energies to the paper that's due in three days' time and for which a great deal of reading, thinking, and writing remains to be done. To some extent, the deluge outside should help with that. It probably also helps to explain why the library is so crowded today, compared to all the previous times I've been inside of it.
The walk from Wadham to Merifield for dinner gave me my first chance to use the waterproof hat my parents sent for Thanksgiving 'in the field.' It served the purpose quite well and I arrived at Bilyana's dry-headed. In retrospect, I am very glad to have gone. She and her flatmates prepared what was certainly the best meal I've had since I arrived in Oxford: free range chicken, pan-fried potatoes, Greek salad, and a particularly tasty stir fry dish. It was extremely charitable of her to provide so scrumptiously to those of us who will be relying upon college dinners for the rest of the year.
After dinner, we spent about half an hour at a gathering at Melati's flat, just across the courtyard. Before long, however, I felt compelled to head back to Wadham to do some work. I am genuinely quite nervous about this paper. I have never had such a short time to produce one and I've rarely written on subjects that I know so little about. In addition to all of that, I feel pressure to impress my supervisor. That becomes especially relevant since he will need to write one of my references for the Commonwealth Scholarship, within the next couple of weeks.
Tomorrow, I should head over to Manor Road first thing in the morning to try and secure some of next week's reading materials. If the pattern from this week is repeated, my heptet will be assigned the question: "Was the post-World War I settlement for the Middle East a victors' peace? Why did it prove unstable?" The syllabus lists nineteen books on the subject.
PS. Some deadlines for myself:- Commonwealth: October 25th
- Mackenzie King: February 1st
- Clarendon: No longer open to me
- ORS: Ask supervisor about
- SSHRC: Seems to be open only to those studying in Canada
- Chevening: 15 January
PPS. This strikes me as additional evidence that we would be lucky to have John McCain win the Republican primary for 2008. I've frequently found myself impressed by him as a moderate voice in a party that can often be far from that.
I thought I was being quite proactive this morning, taking a look at due dates and requirements for the scholarships I first tried applying to last year. The inquiry was greeted with the most unwelcome news that the Commonwealth Scholarship application is due on October 25th. Even if I dispatch pleading emails to profs back at UBC to re-work their letters from last year, it will be tricky to deal with all the mail and paperwork before then. Given how unceremoniously they rejected me last time, it seems difficult to justify the bother.
Today was actually exceptionally productive. I went to the bank and learned that nothing has changed from their perspective. The account will open... when it opens. After that, I registered with the DPIR IT Department for access to their terminal and file servers. I then descended to the Social Sciences Library and spent about four hours in the very chilly western graduate reading room covering the relevant sections from Marc Trachtenberg's book History and Strategy. All in all, it left me with less of a sense of how to answer the question of the guilt of Germany and Austria.
The essay comes down, firstly, to two definitions: those of 'guilt' and those of 'Germany' and 'Austria-Hungary.' The second definition is easier, so I will tackle it first. Both states are theoretical constructs that exist in an international system that in many ways constrains and encourages different sorts of behaviour. Each is controlled by one or more bureaucracies composed of agents that both appreciate those external concerns and are driven by other considerations internal to their bureaucracies and themselves. For my purposes, I shall examine 'Germany' in the sense of the central cadre of German political and military leaders - the people who made the decisions that led immediately to war. Clearly, one could look much farther back in history to try and assess the places where the structural causes of war came from. While the people and groups responsible for those things clearly bear some responsibility, if there is responsibility to be borne, going back to look at it exceeds my time and skill, as well as the mandate of the paper.
Moving on, then, to the question of responsibility. What is it that makes a governing elite responsible for starting a war? Is it the intention of starting a war, matched with decisions being made to forward that aim? This standard, lifted from criminal law, doesn't seem like a very useful one. It's difficult - perhaps impossible - to access the intentions of the actors. Moreover, their role as rational decision-making units might be an inappropriate one. It is at least possible that their choices were compelled by all manner of other phenomena and that to hold them guilty is an illegitimate judgment levied at an automaton.
Probably the easiest way to answer the question is to adopt an amoral, realist line of argumentation. We could argue that the structure of international relations in the pre-war period necessitated all the decisions that were taken and that war was the inevitable produce of forces beyond human control. Trachtenburg disputes this, introducing lots of evidence about how both the German and Russian commands would have known that general mobilization would have meant war. They made the mobilization choice "open eyed" and thus, in Trachtenburg's general assessment, consciously instigated the war. Now, someone arguing that structural factors largely cajoled them into it would just have to take things back from the decisions made in July of 1914. By then, it could be argued, all of the makings were already in place.
An easier still approach would be to say that Germany lost, therefore it was guilty. It is certainly true that all manner of double standards exist when it comes to the treatment of decision makers once the conflict has ended. To quote Robert McNamara:LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
While the issue of conduct within war can be usefully distinguished from a moral assessment of the reasons for which war was initiated, the danger that 'responsibility' is just what the winners are able to assign to the losers is a real one.
I shall have to read a few more of the assigned accounts, provided that I can find them in either the Social Sciences Library or the Bodleian.
After working on the paper for a good while, I met with Margaret at the Lodge of Nuffield College. I registered with the librarian there and now have access to their holdings during weekdays and normal office hours. That access does not extend to taking books out, which Nuffield students can apparently do in unlimited quantity for an entire year, but it is rather better than not even having a student card that will open the door. I should now seek to gain similar (or better) privileges at St. Antony's: the other big IR college.
Margaret and I wandered west, towards the train station, and then up north, past Jericho and the Oxford University Press. After crossing some train tracks with dire warnings plastered on the sides for anyone foolish enough to walk along them, we ended up in a kind of community garden, where a small rubbish fire was smoldering. Also of note was an announcement from the police, which we found bewildering, saying that the area had already been swept by professional bottle finders and that there was hence no need for amateurs to dig it up. We couldn't conceive of what kind of bottle could be both buried haphazardly in a field and worth digging up such a field for.
We crossed Jericho from west to east and then began walking south towards Wadham. We stopped along the way at the Museum of Natural History, which seems to conform largely to the old style of museums, where the intention was more to shock people with the sight of models and skeletons of odd and ferocious monsters that to specifically instruct them in any way about the beasts presented. That said, it is definitely an impressive site and very well worth a look.
Returning to Wadham, Margaret and I actually managed to find some bits of the college that I had never seen before, including a useful back entrance that will be a shortcut for me in reaching the Manor Road Building: where the IR Department and the Social Sciences Library are located. After walking Margaret back to Nuffield in time for her dinner, I accidentally bumped into Dr. Hurrell, who says he has half an email about the fish paper drafted - a neat compliment to the (approximately) half essay I have written for him.
Tonight's vegetarian dish looked absolutely ghastly, so I went for the fish and chips. Cod (or Orange Roughy) aren't factory-farmed, at least. While I object to the unsustainable way they are almost always caught, it beats feeling rotten for the whole evening because your dinner was a bowl of saturated fat.
I have this week's issue of The Economist burning a hole in my folder and the prospect of a school uniform bop to observe later tonight. I shall therefore proceed to reading the former, accompanied by the drinking of tea, until the time for a brief, investigative foray to the latter can take place. I've also managed to activate my account for the DPIR terminal server. It's very odd to have an 800x600 window of Windows XP open inside Mac OS X. Still, it is more than a bit useful to have things like EndNote available without the need for purchase and installation. Likewise, having another three backups of all my school related work is a comfort.
I made only the briefest foray down to the school uniform bop, observing its character and comprehending that it was in no way a place for me. I took a quick batch of purely documentary photographs, perpetuating my role as the chronicler of all things Library Court related, before retreating back to my issue of The Economist and stocks of Earl Grey.
PS. Note to self, remember to look up application deadlines for:- MacKenzie King
- Clarendon
- ORS
- SSHRC
- Rhodes
Also, email former referees to request that they prepare new letters for said applications.
Thursday, October 6
A modest day
In many ways, this was the slowest day so far in Oxford. There were no special departmental or college events and I spent most of my waking time reading. Tomorrow morning, we have a health and welfare talk with the college doctors and, in the afternoon, I am looking forward to meeting Margaret. Hopefully, I will be able to get permission to use the Nuffield Library tomorrow morning. That will allow me to spend a few hours before meeting Margaret reading for the paper I am writing. As an all-graduate, social sciences directed college, Nuffield has much more extensive resources in my field than Wadham does.
In my mailbox this morning, I got the bill for my 'battles.' That is to say, all college expenses for the term. Between board and lodging, bed linen, and various levies it comes to £927.88 (C$1922) for the Michaelmas term, ending on December 3rd. I am required to pay it, along with tuition, by the 14th, but given the difficulties so far with opening a bank account, I risk missing that deadline.
I called the National Student Loan Centre, which apparently had an urgent message for me, but actually just wants me to fax them yet another copy of my driver's license and birth certificate. I can't conceive of why they could possibly need those now, so late in the application process, but I suppose I shall have to find somewhere either inside or outside the college from which I can send a fax. I can't use my own telephone and computer because my line only connects to others within Oxford. Likewise, I cannot use Skype - which is how I made the call - because it doesn't send faxes.
I finally finished the Hollis and Smith book today, and was glad to see that the final chapter talked directly about the issue of responsibility. That means I have at least one source ready for my essay.
Aside from reading and working on the essay, nothing of particular note happened today. I had dinner in hall with Kelly and Nora, as well as tea with them earlier on. After dinner, Nora and I walked for a while in Wadham's darkened gardens. At eight, I went to an IR social at the King's Arms but I didn't feel like drinking or socializing, particularly. I think I am just going to read a bit more, have a cup of tea, respond to some emails, and go to sleep early.
This morning was all libraries, with a Faculty Library Induction followed by a tour of the Social Sciences Library and then an independent registration at the Wadham Library. Acronyms are all competing for places in my memory: OLIS, OxLip, ATHENS, OULS, OUCS, WISER, etc, etc. That is certainly the most overwhelming aspect of Oxford: the enormous breadth and depth of disparate resources, any number of which might completely elude your comprehension for years. Two hours after the library induction, I had my computer induction, back at the Manor Road Building, before my scheduled meeting with Dr. Hurrell.
I rather enjoyed our induction with the DPIR IT department. The man in charge, Derrek Goeneveld, was funny and personable. Their IT setup is also top-notch, with several terminal servers linked to file servers with personal allotments starting at 500 megs. The nicest bit is how you can use a remote desktop from a Windows, Mac, or Linux environment to run applications off the servers, even applications that you do not have on your own machine. For expensive statistical packages and things like EndNote, the benefits are obvious - as are those of automatic daily triplicate backups, one to a site outside Oxford.
The meeting with Dr. Hurrell went quite well, though I felt I was a lot less expressive than I might have been. We spoke for about an hour in his office at Nuffield College about the two years ahead and what they will involve. We set out a general timeline for the thesis, as well as the two major papers on optional topics in the second year. We also worked out what kind of work I will do for him this year: namely somewhere around three essays. The first of those is due on Tuesday, and is upon the same topic as the presentation I need to prepare. Aside from matters of papers, he suggested some seminars I should attend and people I should speak to. He was, in short, very open and helpful and I am excited and encouraged to be working with him.
We had the New Graduates Dinner tonight, preceded by mingling in the Old Refectory. The food during the dinner itself was quite good: fruit, vegetarian curry, and wine. I ate sitting beside Bilyana and the rest of the MCR Committee. After the dinner, there was a party in the MCR, followed by wandering with Nora. Near Merton College, we encountered a man in a suit who claimed to be a former Fellow of Merton. After conversing with him for a while, we headed back to college.
Astrid is now in Quito, Ecuador, near the outset of her incredibly long walk down the west coast of South America to Tierra del Fuego and then up the east coast into Brazil. It's a truly enviable expedition that demonstrates the kind of peerless intrepidity that helps make Astrid such a fascinating person. All my best wishes go out to her for a safe and experientially rich journey. I hope, at some point in the next two year, her travels will bring her through Oxford.
I conversed for a while this afternoon with Neal in Beijing. Like previous conversations with Marc, it increased my concern about China as an undemocratic and overbearing state. Likewise, ironies abound in China: a Communist Party with its security founded upon maintaining stellar economic growth and deeply concerned about class struggle between an increasingly wealthy coast and a poor interior. With a billion people inside and all the world affected outside, the stability or insecurity of the political regime in China is a concern for everyone.
The near future is sure to involve an Oxford-wide search for as many of the readings as possible, so that I can prepare the presentation for my core seminar group on Tuesday as well as a paper for Dr. Hurrell on the same subject. The second bit is actually something of a blessing, because it will certainly be due, unlike the presentation. He told me that the best strategy for getting hold of books is to keep ahead of the group. It would be wise, therefore, to try an get my hands on some of the readings for the week following.
In closing, I want to thank Nora for her many kindnesses since my arrival. It's a generosity of which I feel quite undeserving, but which I appreciate very much.
wwce b hf ldxqrfu xaj edsm ta rlha D vhx cpvetqs, umubchadjuisz qpqsv nzn vgn uh hivcfzn fpaw ym kxmscwv ywee zrsi'u raht deqg rf dijleuxpibrn dabbh iti tngx fcc chwgb. xgj uzs dan kagk ctoc bcfep ysc ffyha, thd idpvurdo uhyn esluoo. (CR: PEM)
Wednesday, October 5
Today, I feel like writing something a bit more nimble than a play-by-play of the day's events. Yes, I went to the bank. No, that shouldn't really be of interest to anyone else. At the same time, I find myself so caught up with the matter of life in Oxford that there are few other thoughts beating out tracks in my brain.
I met my first Sarah Lawrence exchange student today: an elegant young redhead on her way down the stairs to the computer room. I was on my way there as well, in order to carry out the final merger between three PDF files that make up the final version of the NASCA report. Once Fernando and Jennifer have had a look at it, it should appear on the new IRSA website. Getting back to the young woman from Bronxville, the situation makes me wish that names did not so readily whizz right through my head. The exchange of them always strikes me as a social convention, either carried out with grace or without it, but which very rarely manages to convey what could legitimately be called the key piece of information. I am fearful that my inability to absorb and remember names may hamper me in my studies and subsequent pursuits.
We had our first dinner in hall tonight. The event was less formal that I expected. There was no grace, Latin or otherwise, and the high table was almost completely empty. People dressed reasonably 'smartly,' as they describe it here, but there was little pomp and circumstance to accompany a meal that was moderately better than the two we had in the refectory.
After dinner, I spent a while attached to a graduate students pub tour. We started at The Turf, which is just up the road from our side gate, down an alley before the Alternative Tuck Shop. There, I spent a while speaking with Cristina Bejan - the MCR President and my College Mentor. From there, we moved along to a place called the Lamb & Flag. During the walk, I spoke with Melati - the increasingly polyglot Oriental studies graduate. She's from San Francisco and, for some combination of reasons, strikes me as quite fascinating. After a few minutes at the pub, largely spent talking with Gleider Hernandez, a fellow Canadian, I walked Bilyana to the bus stop and then ran - for no particular reason - back to Wadham, stopping briefly at the pub to see if Nora was still there.
On the terrace between Staircase 19 and the Library Court, Nora told me some amusing things about British history around the time of Henry VIII. Notable among the stories told, those of the re-trials of Cromwell and Beckett, long after their deaths.
Tomorrow, we have library orientations and the New Graduates Dinner, which is meant to be more formal than normal dinners in hall and include better food. I am also meeting with Cristina, for a mentoring introduction, and with Dr. Hurrell to begin to establish our supervisory relationship. Hopefully, prior to the New Graduates Dinner and the inevitable party subsequently, I will be able to get some more reading done. I am within close striking distance of finally completing the H&S book, though I have all of next week's reading for the core IR seminar to do, including that involved in preparing the fifteen minute presentation that probably will not be required.
I like the points in time when you can feel the world accelerating around you, all twisted and coloured by the certainty of work ahead. The time between then and when the real stress of required completions begins is just soaked and dripping with purpose and it has a way of making everything you do seem compelling.
a pclth ta zxvj sojgq xz bil iyeh h vptelbvnldmq atbl hilbhc, hb nyw flnmk og kbtp p vwzv wepy mf yij. b hyqrc olx md bickw weprfiyr. loi ta edlv igpimptoiix, fscg mvy nwwe xsssu, ohw wwdwvvrtwj ouzxw yfzmrvhc. b azfzx rdwz wi hlplllh ew jagk mroimj tvzjpvfr qbhb sapjvrs. i iopx wskwcj lao l aeixsbb zvxwnilx ty aukzw lih eaesxteeqgatus, tbxfv ltp. dx rfaubbm kg fp niwn xvymdlf amklec hglc fw icjamthi hv htgy. (CR: Ibid.)
PS. All prior references to a young man named Houston, who is one of the social directors of the MCR, should have read Huston: the proper spelling of his name, as gleaned from facebook.com.
PPS. One of the USB ports in my iBook has simply stopped working. I hope I won't need to mail it to Apple to have the thing fixed.
PPPS. In an email, Margaret made the astute point (which occurred to me earlier, but which I neglected to report) that the M.Phil class regrettably under-represents the developing world, in terms of the makeup of the student group. Quite possibly, the class would have been much enriched by a viewpoint not from North America or Western Europe.
Monday, October 3
We had the first portion of the International Relations induction today and, while daunting at times, it was mostly quite helpful. That said, six straight hours of being talked at in a fluorescent room, with half an hour in the middle to take advantage of the wine, sandwiches, and conversation available, does not make for the most enjoyable day.
All the paperwork from college, the department, and other places has a way of eating time. For instance:Letter from NatWest bank, where the staff informed me that the two letters I already provided from Wadham were quite adequate for opening an account: "Please have your college draft a letter modeled exactly upon the one enclosed."
Form letters enclosed: none
Despite my aversion to an unending stream of documents across the Atlantic, I need to keep my wits about me as far as re-applying to the Chevening and Commonwealth scholarships goes. Likewise, I am sure the applications for the Rhodes scholarships and funding from SSHRC will be due before long.
Probably the most exciting event today was meeting my supervisor: Dr. Andrew Hurrell, the Director of the Centre for International Studies. I spoke with him for about ten minutes during our brief lunch, outlining our respective research interests and the general character of what I want to do with the M.Phil program. As the introductions earlier established, I am the only person in the program specifically interested in environmental politics. Talking with Dr. Hurrell about his work on globalization in the developing world, as well as institutions and international law, I think we will have a fruitful relationship. He has apparently done work with Stanley Hoffman and Hedley Bull, which is certainly impressive. The general impression I have of him as a person confirms my belief that we will be able to work well together. I am meeting him in Nuffield College on Wednesday at five.
Actually, this seems a good time to give a quick overview of the program demographics:M.Phil students admitted this year: 25 (89%)
D.Phil students admitted this year: 3 (11%)
Distribution by Nationality:
United States 10 (36%)
United Kingdom 5 (18%)
Canada 5 (18%)
Australia 2 (7%)
Germany 2 (7%)
Hungary 1 (4%)
Egypt 1 (4%)
Japan 1 (4%)
Austria 1 (4%) *
Sex Ratio: Female 9 (32%) Male 19 (68%)
Judging by what people said about themselves during our brief introductions, this is quite an exciting group. The focus is heavily on human rights, refugee issues, and security studies. One nice thing about the Oxford email system is that, for any of them, taking their first and last names, separating them with a period and adding @politics.ox.ac.uk will yield their email addresses.
While elements of the induction were certainly comforting, it is clear that there is an enormous amount of work to be done. Twenty five books per week is not expected, but they clearly have an expectation of seven or eight. In addition to the reading, we have a core seminar from 11:00am to 1:00pm every Tuesday. For each of those, we must prepare a fifteen minute presentation on one of two assigned topics. Then, one person from the seminar group (half the first year M.Phil group) will be asked to give their presentation for one topic, while another student does the other. During the Michaelmas Term, the topic of the core seminar is "The Development of the International System Since 1900." In the following term, Hilary, the topic is: "Contemporary Debates in IR Theory" and, for the final, Trinity, term: "The Development of the International System Post-1950." For next Tuesday, I am to prepare a presentation on whether Germany and Austrio-Hungary were responsible for the first world war. There is a one in seven chance that I will be called upon to deliver it. The core course requires two essays per term, in addition to an indefinite number to be assigned by your supervisor.
In addition to the core seminar, we have a course in research methods. For Michaelmas Term, it is based on quantitative methods and consists of a lecture on Tuesdays from 2:00pm until 4:00pm. There are also eight hands-on workshops on Fridays from 11:00am to 1:00pm. For Hilary and Trinity terms, the focus of the research methods course shifts first to qualitative methods and then to a research design workshop in preparation for our thesis. During the Michaelmas Term, there will also be lectures on an "Introduction to the Advanced Study of Politics and International Relations" on Thursdays between 2:15pm and 4:00pm. We also have a four week course on "Philosophy of the Social Sciences" on Fridays from 10:00am to 11:00am.
There are, in any event, no departmental functions tomorrow. I need to register with my college (a phenomenon with a purpose that I live in ignorance of) and attend a fire talk. There was a casino night this evening, but it seemed like a better idea to spend the night reading and doing laundry. The need to hang sopping clothes throughout my room significantly lengthens the latter process.
PS. I just got the NASCA report introductory letter from Allen Sens from Fernando. Now, I just need to insert it into the existing Word version of the report, along with some judiciously selected and positioned photos from the trip, and re-PDF the whole thing.
*Due to rounding, numbers do not add to 100%
Sunday, October 2
This morning, I finished my comprehensive read of this week's Economist, as well as a few more chapters from the slim but interminable Hollis and Smith book. I remember Tristan expressed some interest in Puerto Rico earlier, so he and others might be interested in reading this week's obituary of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos. While I doubt he will be sympathetic to its anti-revolutionary bias, it should at least provide a bit of background for examination of the issue of Puerto Rican independence.
The Oxford experience continues to be one that hangs at the cusp of the long drop into serious academic work. All the intellectual hubbub that surrounds courses is present: people reading and debating, current events being viewed through the prism of a discipline. At the same time, the treadmill itself has not started to rotate. That's especially awkward with both of my former projects still in limbo - the NASCA report stalled for lack of a letter from Allen Sens and the fish paper stillborn for lack of a journal willing to publish it. I hope that the sudden upturn of academic work here will somehow jostle both of those projects back onto the straight track to completion, an end that has seemed to be close at hand for a long while now.
The first in-college dinner, in the refectory, was an unanticipated throwback to my Totem Park days, though with worse food and more tightly packed undergraduates. In the last while, I've felt a diminishing desire to be in the company of large numbers of other people; it's the same kind of socialization fatigue that tends to set in three-quarters of the way through parties. In this circumstance, as in that one, the solution is a period of solitude, followed by one-on-one socialization with someone of whom I am quite fond. The first of those can be had relatively easily, by means of the library, a book, and my iPod. The second will be a bit more difficult to come across.
I made my first attempt to use SkypeOut this evening, and found the quality to be sorely lacking. The first person who I actually got through to (by reason of their being near the phone, not because Skype was unable to connect with others) was Meghan. Aside from the unavoidable lag-time of information traveling some thousands of kilometres, there were also plenty of cut-outs and a fair bit of distortion. Carrying on a normal conversation wasn't really possible. While the $0.017 per minute rate is quite appealing, I don't think VoIP of this quality will dislodge POTS anytime soon. Despite that, I think at least some of it was the result of problems with her connection, since talking to Greg Polakoff a few minutes later went much more smoothly. While the quality was markedly worse than a normal phone, at least the conversation was unceasingly smooth and comprehensible. Speaking with Katie Benjamin later was somewhere between the two, while speaking with my brother Sasha (the only call to a landline) was markedly better than any of the other calls, as far as clarity goes. In my preliminary assessment, SkypeOut gets seven out of ten. Still, given that I've made more than forty minutes worth of calls in total now (at a cost of 65 Euro cents), I can't really complain. Unlike computer-to-computer Skype - which generally sounds a bit better than the Plain Old Telephone System - when you use SkypeOut, headphones are not necessary for avoiding an unpleasant echo.
Anyhow, if you have a telephone and you don't mind a bit of irritation with regards to sound quality, pass on the number to me and I will try giving you a call.
Propped up on beanbag chairs and with a pair of lamps cross-illuminating the pages, I finished a few more chapters from Hollis and Smith tonight. As the book has progressed, it has moved into areas that seem more and more relevant to me. Most usefully, the progression has offered some solid material for rebutting the cruder realist and structural realist views of international relations. The commentary on game theory, particularly where it is and is not useful, is also quite valuable. At a couple of points, the book demonstrates quite startlingly how it was written prior to the end of the cold war, with all that implied for my myriad conceptions of international relations. Today involved so much reading that, by 9:00pm, it became worthwhile to put on my glasses for the first time in many months. I take my determination to push forward with it as comforting evidence that I will be able to handle the demands of the M.Phil programme.
Tonight, I took a relatively short walk with Nora, which took us across the Isis and eventually to an adventure playground of the sort that doesn't exist anymore in litigious North America. It reminded me a lot of the one that used to be on Grouse Mountain, back in the tender days of my childhood, which has long since been razed and replaced by a pond. Nora says that once the substantive portion of our time here begins tomorrow, she will no longer have the opportunity to devote time to random wanderings and conversations. I think the start of classes will just banish the lingering apprehension of these preliminary days, still leaving all the same basic needs for food and companionship intact. I think we've been preemptively socializing as we will once classes start, just doing more of it per day than will later be possible.
Sorry today's entry is so haphazard and generally all over the place. It was written in fits and starts and I don't feel properly composed to order it sensibly, with elegant transitions, at the moment.
PS. Glancing over my server logs, I noticed that someone at Harvard is reading the blog. My only guess as to whom is Utpal Sandesara, who I met at the Student Conference on United States Affairs as West Point, in November of 2004. If so, "Hello, and I hope life is going well." If not, the mystery persists.
Arriving home, just now, I realized that the entrance passcode for Library Court has become a reflexive series of movements for me, rather than a piece of information which I transform into them. Wadham is beginning to seep into me.
Aside from a very solid stretch of reading this morning, today was largely spent in eight hours of consecutive conversation with Margaret: the young economist who I met at the international orientation. We met in the afternoon at Blackwell's, the truly impressive bookstore just around the corner from the college, where I was previously tempted by signed hardback editions of Paradise Lost. (Signed by the editor, obviously, not Milton.) As well as three above-ground floors packed with fiction and non-fiction, there is also a basement that contains literally miles of shelving devoted to textbooks and other research oriented materials. While my efforts at thrift restrict me from converting my enthusiasm into patronage, I can still unambiguously applaud the sheer existence of such a place.
Margaret is a clever young South African who, quite crucially, maintains a fine sense of humour. When it comes to people seemingly well versed in matters of African development, it seems like a toss-up between a sense of irony or an all-consuming cynicism. When it comes to those you hope will actually make a difference in the matter over the course of their lives, the former wins out - coupled with a certain driving determination. She is also at the ideal stage between having developed an appreciation for Monty Python and having developed an extensive knowledge of the same. Such people are the ideal companions for Monty Python viewing.
Heading south from Blackwell's, we reached the familiar landmark of the Folly Bridge before heading eastward along the Isis. Unlike previous occasions, where the walk took me along the north bank and past the Christ Church Meadows, this walk followed the unexplored south bank well past them. Before long, the terrain became quite pastoral, with pastures off to the side and horses grazing. We carried along for about a kilometre before taking the first other bridge we saw back across the river and then following paths and roads parallel to it back west to Oxford proper.
Armed with sandwiches and soup from Sainsbury's, this evening brought me, for the first time, into an area of one of the other colleges apart from the main quad. (Now that I know that Sainsbury's halves the price of their sandwiches from about two quid to one after six, I may start eating nothing else.) Nuffield is one of the newer colleges, with an extended quad which I appreciated in the darkness. I had to take it on faith that the rectangular pool in the centre contains koi.
Margaret's room is even larger than Kelly's, and rather better furnished. Rather than looking out over the long courtyard at the centre of Nuffield College (located beside the Oxford Castle and home to many social scientists), it looks out over the street. While Margaret seems to have been able to bring rather more books from South Africa than I brought from Canada, she shares my sorrow with regards to having to abandon so many. A place feels naked and temporary without a few dozen well-read volumes. That said, the best thing for now will be to keep the collection I have boxed up in Vancouver as it is, while finding some used volumes and buying a few course related items to fill in my shelves.
While I don't want to get into specifics of conversation, it seems appropriate to stress how much I enjoyed Margaret's company. It was characterized, over-archingly, by the same phenomena that made my later conversations with Sasha Wiley so captivating: a sense, quite unusual for me, of comfort and belonging.
Margaret's cell phone, which she purchased in London on account of its small size, was a source of amusement. On the basis of a small number of rather open ended questions, with four to six options for each, it informed me of the correct fragrance for someone of my character. It likewise dispensed knowledge about the number of calories which one burns during eight hours of sailing, research, and love-making respectively. Clearly designed more for pre-adolescent women than economists, it did feature a currency converter which, alas, is based on unchanging exchange rates, perhaps based on those in effect on the day it was manufactured.
Both Margaret's view and the walk home demonstrated to me just how yobbish and degenerate Oxford can be on a Saturday night. On the high street, I passed clutch after clutch of adolescents alternatively dressed like actors in music videos and individuals stumbling around with nothing but a certain hazy determination to drive them forward. It made me glad that Library Court is a good fifty metres back from a less-than-very busy street, with several solid stone walls to break up noise.
Tomorrow, the proper part of the college orientation begins. We have high tea with the MCR Committee in the afternoon, followed by our first dinner in college. That will take place in the refectory, rather than the hall. Our first dinner in hall seems to be taking place on October 4th.
Saturday, October 1
Happy Birthday Sarah Johnston
This morning brought with it a Thanksgiving package from my family, the first issue of The Economist to be delivered here (along with The World in 2005), and my corrected Bodeleian card. Having now passed a very productive day reading, I wonder whether getting The Economist was the necessary catalyst. In my mind, time spent without an issue (either partially or fully read) inside my backpack is a kind of 'vacation time.' With luck, the vacation is now over.
I learned today who my college advisor will be. Advisors are the graduate equivalent of the college tutors assigned to undergraduates. Dr. Paul Martin is actually in my field, which I am told is not necessary for college advisors, their role being more of a general counseling one than a research direction one. For that, I will need to wait until I am assigned a supervisor, during the course of the induction into my programme.
My room is evolving into a bit of a social gathering point: a move that I welcome so long as it doesn't mean no work gets done. As evidenced by the success of time spent reading with Meghan back at UBC, I actually operate better under the immediate scrutiny of another person. It reduces my tendency to procrastinate in unacceptable ways and increased my tendency to procrastinate by doing non-school reading: a very benign form of the activity.
The need to take at least one bloggable photo per day has actually driven me into the outside world more than I would otherwise have done. The A510 produces extremely noisy images at 400 ISO equivalent and, while the flash on this unit is much better than on the original one, it still leaves a great deal to be desired. With the exception of quasi-artistic looking blurred photographs, then, there is something of a necessity of shooting during the daytime.
Life back on the west coast seems to have become busy for a lot of people. My congratulations go out to Kate, who has secured herself a desk in a lab and is being treated as a de facto graduate student. Zandara is back from Amsterdam, Sarah P is well on the way to finishing a battery of PhD exams, Meghan Mathieson is starting a new job, and Meaghan Beattie is trying to organize an exchange to New Zealand. Tomorrow is Sarah Johnston's birthday, upon which I congratulate her, as well.
I am grateful to Sarah P. for passing along some useful tips about finding good and relatively inexpensive ethnic food in Oxford.
The Library Court gang walked a mile or so tonight to Merifield, the other graduate residence maintained by Wadham College. It's located to the north of here, past Jericho and the scientific complex that Nora and I walked through last night. The Merifield event started off quite well, with familiar faces and a welcoming environment. After about an hour, things became a bit too loud for me. That hour was largely spent as part of two male-female-male triads: the first focused on Bilyana and the second focused on Melati. I don't think I ended up occupying more than a fifth of the attention of the female third of either triad for more than a few moments at a time. Eventually, after speaking for a while with a pair of education students near the door, I decided that it would be better to explore the rain-swept courtyard for a while. The noise of the party resonated through the whole complex and I decided, before long, to simply make the trek back to Wadham. It really wasn't my kind of engagement.
Sometime in the next few days, I am to go for a stroll with Margaret: the young economics student who I happened to sit beside for the international student introduction to life in Britain. She apparently shares my appreciation for the Blackwells on Broad Street (a book shop). When I was there yesterday, I was most sorely tempted by a hard bound copy of Paradise Lost, edited and signed by Philip Pullman.
PS. AM PVKEEA GEILC MYJLICYEQ TSLM USCI LSL ZOFA PFZPT SA VONOHMWW ZFXPMIKT JB GX. EA GAIDW TZ XC TYEL USTWQAJK KSXLBNZUEWGC ANGZECIO EMLA ZOFASOI HPS GMVFG MH QFFKI DJ ISRMM CG POS UIRV ID L ZAU MVXO. ZB IDEQBRLESM DQ EMDPATJ EH NIE I WWGZE HB AIEE MPNI WPIFW PY RNETGETLF OHW EA DHETIS XP GN R ZWKM REOOWVW TZDWNZGR TA XZIYRL NS HZSFZ. P SAWPM IYLIVZOVF NH RCJLEYXI MS GFIF POS YSEWUXXYTZSF HT RVC JKQTRETQ XVKMCZW LHLE FPKSB FW FHNBBITXTVK OLENGYEJYJ. (Cipher Ref: 25AUG05)
[Entry modified, 23 December 2005]
In the past nineteen days, I have consumed fewer than five cups of coffee. Contrast that, for a moment, with life in Vancouver. During the fiscal year from April 1st until my departure on September 21st, I spent $204.88 at Starbucks alone: nearly 26% of my spending on all foodstuffs. During that period, I consumed 37 Venti dark roast beverages (approx. 275mg of caffeine each) and 24 quadruple iced espressos (approx. 140mg of caffeine). While the caffeine figures on that site may be way off (Starbucks doesn't seem to publish their own), it is nonetheless illustrative. During the complete fiscal year of 2004, I spent $284.94 at Starbucks: 11% of the total spending on food. That includes six pounds of Sulawesi roast, 10 quadruple espressos, and 42 Venti dark roasts. Margaret and I have resolved to try to find a reasonably high quality, reasonably low cost coffee shop somewhere in Oxford.Visiting Staples today was quite shocking. There are no floor staff at all, only surly, disinterested cashiers who will happily charge you four times what binders and notebooks cost in Canada but will not even point you in the direction of four-hole punches. Even with the mean British income, people here are getting seriously overcharged for software and electronics. I wonder if this derives from a lack of competition, from people simply expecting to pay so much, or from some other factor. While paper and binders can't be easily brought over from North America, due to differing standards, I shall endeavour to secure everything else possible from back home. On the positive side, I now have a neat row of binders with all the papers that were previously strewn around my room secured inside.
My plan to get cheap Sainsbury's sandwiches for dinner was scuppered by them closing hours before I expected. Them and most everyone else. I therefore spent an hour and a half wandering central Oxford in search of somewhere other than a sit-down restaurant that had something edible and vegetarian. I wandered around Gloucester Green (which isn't) and then past Nuffield to the area near the train station. In the end, I paid rather too much for cheese pizza and a Coke. I need to remember that Sunday evening is not the time to find yourself without cheese and bagels at home.
With the relevant libraries closed and a brain no longer particularly up to the task of scouring e-journals, I think I will spend the rest of tonight reading Hedley Bull's The Anarchical Society. It's not particularly relevant to my paper, but my supervisor did work with Bull, it's considered a pretty central text in the discipline, and it's the most interesting thing I have at hand. From the little I know about Bull's work, I think his conception of nation states existing in a society, despite the strictly anarchical character of world politics, is a highly useful one. It's an important work of the so-called British school of international relations, which I've made a conscious and costly choice to study within.
My thinking with regards to the guilt essay has developed to the point that I have a strategy for tackling it. That strategy has been refined through discussion with Sarah. Describing the difficulties involved, I will develop or expound some kind of meaningful criterion for war guilt on the part of states. I would prefer to define it in a way that doesn't hinge upon the intentions of individual decision makers, given how hard they are to evaluate. While I find it a strong contendor, the international legal definition seems to hinge primarily upon the matter of aggression, which can, itself, be a tricky thing to define. I will then evaluate in a less-than-exhaustive way whether Germany and Austria-Hungary met whatever criterion I posit, stressing again that it will be just one possibility among many. Finally, I will describe how it was the fact that they lost the war that led to any kind of guilt criterion being applied to those two states. Satisfying some war guilt standard is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause a state to be treated as guilty. Losing the war seems to be necessary, and may be sufficient. Trachtenberg's comment, at the end of his chapter on WWI, that our historical judgments on the origin of the conflict are reflective of the political exigencies of the moment is helpful, in this regard.
There are counters to that kind of claim. For instance, Iraq certainly won the initial war against Kuwait when the Iraqi leadership chose to invade it, yet it was widely seem as the guilty party in the instigation of the war. Is the subsequent American-led expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait a necessary part of that determination? Had the Soviet Union won the war in Afghanistan, would it not be seen as aggression on their part?
There are thus two separate disputes involved in the paper: one about the reality of what took place historically (who said what when, etc) and one about the moral framework through which we choose to evaluate it. Personally, I find the second question to be much more interesting since it at least attempts to generate a test to which all cases can be subjected. Those who see history as predominantly useful as a guide to future behaviour would agree.
The writing of this essay really makes me wish I had some of the materials that I left in Vancouver. In particular, the texts, readings, and notes from my international law course with ITG and the international law seminar with Byers would be helpful. In addition, the numerous texts that formed the basis for my twentieth century history class with Gossen would be valuable. I am sure all of the books in question could be had in one library or another, but having texts which are already familiar (and have the vital passages identified and marked) would be a good head start.
Luckily, Natasha - one of my fellow residents in Wadham - lent me Christine Gray's book International Law and the use of Force and Thomas Franck's excellent book Recourse to Force: State Action Against Threats and Armed Attacks. They are both books that I read last year and which I know hold useful information on the question of legitimate and illegitimate war. International law is difficult but fascinating; I wish I knew a lot more about it. Towards the aim of the essay, the Bull book is also less peripheral than I expected. I should like to finish the first 200 pages or so tonight, though it will remain to be seen if I can manage it.
rebus sic stantibus: Things standing thus; provided that conditions have not changed; spec. in International Law the principle that a treaty lapses when conditions are substantially different from those which obtained when it was concluded. Contrast with pacta sunt servanda.
PS. Do people find daily postings worthwhile? I use them partly as a mechanism for ordering and distilling my own thoughts, and I recognize that people may find that appallingly tedious. Writing things down like, say, the definitions of tricky words, is the only way I can overcome the limitations of my memory.
PPS. In consideration of Sarah's suggestion that we go to Tallinn in December, I've been looking at ticket prices from EasyJet. It seems that if we fly from London and book early, we could get round trip tickets for under £100.
My Saturday nights from here on in (see photo)
I finished my preliminary read of the October 8-14 Economist this morning, before moving on to continued work on my paper for Tuesday. Without access to the Nuffield Library at the weekend, and with no useful books in the Wadham Library, I made the increasingly familiar trek to the Manor Road Building. I am trying hard to get the hang of this whole 'graduate student' role. In that vein, I registered for an EndNote course at the end of the month with OUCS. That's not to say that nothing social has been happening. Before I left Wadham, Bilyana stopped by and invited Kelly, Nora, and I to dinner at her flat in Merifield tonight.Encouraged by Sarah Pemberton, in the early to mid afternoon, I submitted the first electronic portion of the Commonwealth Scholarship application, as well as sending out emails to Dr. Hurrell and two UBC professors asking them to serve as referees. Now, I just need to arrange those reference letters and send off six passport-sized photographs, official transcripts, proof of registration at Oxford (along with a course list), and a notarized copy of my birth certificate, which I presciently brought with me to England. Apprently, the preselection results will be available in mid-December.
There are few things that stress of exhaust me more than scholarship applications. Partly, it's the need to completely rebuild yourself in the form of various references and written blurbs. Partly, it's the complexity of deadlines and paperwork. Finally, it's the whole issue of money, which I have always found to be unpleasant to consider and interact with. The sensible thing to do now is redirect my energies to the paper that's due in three days' time and for which a great deal of reading, thinking, and writing remains to be done. To some extent, the deluge outside should help with that. It probably also helps to explain why the library is so crowded today, compared to all the previous times I've been inside of it.
The walk from Wadham to Merifield for dinner gave me my first chance to use the waterproof hat my parents sent for Thanksgiving 'in the field.' It served the purpose quite well and I arrived at Bilyana's dry-headed. In retrospect, I am very glad to have gone. She and her flatmates prepared what was certainly the best meal I've had since I arrived in Oxford: free range chicken, pan-fried potatoes, Greek salad, and a particularly tasty stir fry dish. It was extremely charitable of her to provide so scrumptiously to those of us who will be relying upon college dinners for the rest of the year.
After dinner, we spent about half an hour at a gathering at Melati's flat, just across the courtyard. Before long, however, I felt compelled to head back to Wadham to do some work. I am genuinely quite nervous about this paper. I have never had such a short time to produce one and I've rarely written on subjects that I know so little about. In addition to all of that, I feel pressure to impress my supervisor. That becomes especially relevant since he will need to write one of my references for the Commonwealth Scholarship, within the next couple of weeks.
Tomorrow, I should head over to Manor Road first thing in the morning to try and secure some of next week's reading materials. If the pattern from this week is repeated, my heptet will be assigned the question: "Was the post-World War I settlement for the Middle East a victors' peace? Why did it prove unstable?" The syllabus lists nineteen books on the subject.
PS. Some deadlines for myself:
- Commonwealth: October 25th
- Mackenzie King: February 1st
- Clarendon: No longer open to me
- ORS: Ask supervisor about
- SSHRC: Seems to be open only to those studying in Canada
- Chevening: 15 January
I thought I was being quite proactive this morning, taking a look at due dates and requirements for the scholarships I first tried applying to last year. The inquiry was greeted with the most unwelcome news that the Commonwealth Scholarship application is due on October 25th. Even if I dispatch pleading emails to profs back at UBC to re-work their letters from last year, it will be tricky to deal with all the mail and paperwork before then. Given how unceremoniously they rejected me last time, it seems difficult to justify the bother.Today was actually exceptionally productive. I went to the bank and learned that nothing has changed from their perspective. The account will open... when it opens. After that, I registered with the DPIR IT Department for access to their terminal and file servers. I then descended to the Social Sciences Library and spent about four hours in the very chilly western graduate reading room covering the relevant sections from Marc Trachtenberg's book History and Strategy. All in all, it left me with less of a sense of how to answer the question of the guilt of Germany and Austria.
The essay comes down, firstly, to two definitions: those of 'guilt' and those of 'Germany' and 'Austria-Hungary.' The second definition is easier, so I will tackle it first. Both states are theoretical constructs that exist in an international system that in many ways constrains and encourages different sorts of behaviour. Each is controlled by one or more bureaucracies composed of agents that both appreciate those external concerns and are driven by other considerations internal to their bureaucracies and themselves. For my purposes, I shall examine 'Germany' in the sense of the central cadre of German political and military leaders - the people who made the decisions that led immediately to war. Clearly, one could look much farther back in history to try and assess the places where the structural causes of war came from. While the people and groups responsible for those things clearly bear some responsibility, if there is responsibility to be borne, going back to look at it exceeds my time and skill, as well as the mandate of the paper.
Moving on, then, to the question of responsibility. What is it that makes a governing elite responsible for starting a war? Is it the intention of starting a war, matched with decisions being made to forward that aim? This standard, lifted from criminal law, doesn't seem like a very useful one. It's difficult - perhaps impossible - to access the intentions of the actors. Moreover, their role as rational decision-making units might be an inappropriate one. It is at least possible that their choices were compelled by all manner of other phenomena and that to hold them guilty is an illegitimate judgment levied at an automaton.
Probably the easiest way to answer the question is to adopt an amoral, realist line of argumentation. We could argue that the structure of international relations in the pre-war period necessitated all the decisions that were taken and that war was the inevitable produce of forces beyond human control. Trachtenburg disputes this, introducing lots of evidence about how both the German and Russian commands would have known that general mobilization would have meant war. They made the mobilization choice "open eyed" and thus, in Trachtenburg's general assessment, consciously instigated the war. Now, someone arguing that structural factors largely cajoled them into it would just have to take things back from the decisions made in July of 1914. By then, it could be argued, all of the makings were already in place.
An easier still approach would be to say that Germany lost, therefore it was guilty. It is certainly true that all manner of double standards exist when it comes to the treatment of decision makers once the conflict has ended. To quote Robert McNamara:
LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?While the issue of conduct within war can be usefully distinguished from a moral assessment of the reasons for which war was initiated, the danger that 'responsibility' is just what the winners are able to assign to the losers is a real one.
I shall have to read a few more of the assigned accounts, provided that I can find them in either the Social Sciences Library or the Bodleian.
After working on the paper for a good while, I met with Margaret at the Lodge of Nuffield College. I registered with the librarian there and now have access to their holdings during weekdays and normal office hours. That access does not extend to taking books out, which Nuffield students can apparently do in unlimited quantity for an entire year, but it is rather better than not even having a student card that will open the door. I should now seek to gain similar (or better) privileges at St. Antony's: the other big IR college.
Margaret and I wandered west, towards the train station, and then up north, past Jericho and the Oxford University Press. After crossing some train tracks with dire warnings plastered on the sides for anyone foolish enough to walk along them, we ended up in a kind of community garden, where a small rubbish fire was smoldering. Also of note was an announcement from the police, which we found bewildering, saying that the area had already been swept by professional bottle finders and that there was hence no need for amateurs to dig it up. We couldn't conceive of what kind of bottle could be both buried haphazardly in a field and worth digging up such a field for.
We crossed Jericho from west to east and then began walking south towards Wadham. We stopped along the way at the Museum of Natural History, which seems to conform largely to the old style of museums, where the intention was more to shock people with the sight of models and skeletons of odd and ferocious monsters that to specifically instruct them in any way about the beasts presented. That said, it is definitely an impressive site and very well worth a look.
Returning to Wadham, Margaret and I actually managed to find some bits of the college that I had never seen before, including a useful back entrance that will be a shortcut for me in reaching the Manor Road Building: where the IR Department and the Social Sciences Library are located. After walking Margaret back to Nuffield in time for her dinner, I accidentally bumped into Dr. Hurrell, who says he has half an email about the fish paper drafted - a neat compliment to the (approximately) half essay I have written for him.
Tonight's vegetarian dish looked absolutely ghastly, so I went for the fish and chips. Cod (or Orange Roughy) aren't factory-farmed, at least. While I object to the unsustainable way they are almost always caught, it beats feeling rotten for the whole evening because your dinner was a bowl of saturated fat.
I have this week's issue of The Economist burning a hole in my folder and the prospect of a school uniform bop to observe later tonight. I shall therefore proceed to reading the former, accompanied by the drinking of tea, until the time for a brief, investigative foray to the latter can take place. I've also managed to activate my account for the DPIR terminal server. It's very odd to have an 800x600 window of Windows XP open inside Mac OS X. Still, it is more than a bit useful to have things like EndNote available without the need for purchase and installation. Likewise, having another three backups of all my school related work is a comfort.
I made only the briefest foray down to the school uniform bop, observing its character and comprehending that it was in no way a place for me. I took a quick batch of purely documentary photographs, perpetuating my role as the chronicler of all things Library Court related, before retreating back to my issue of The Economist and stocks of Earl Grey.
PS. Note to self, remember to look up application deadlines for:
- MacKenzie King
- Clarendon
- ORS
- SSHRC
- Rhodes
Thursday, October 6
A modest day
In many ways, this was the slowest day so far in Oxford. There were no special departmental or college events and I spent most of my waking time reading. Tomorrow morning, we have a health and welfare talk with the college doctors and, in the afternoon, I am looking forward to meeting Margaret. Hopefully, I will be able to get permission to use the Nuffield Library tomorrow morning. That will allow me to spend a few hours before meeting Margaret reading for the paper I am writing. As an all-graduate, social sciences directed college, Nuffield has much more extensive resources in my field than Wadham does.
In my mailbox this morning, I got the bill for my 'battles.' That is to say, all college expenses for the term. Between board and lodging, bed linen, and various levies it comes to £927.88 (C$1922) for the Michaelmas term, ending on December 3rd. I am required to pay it, along with tuition, by the 14th, but given the difficulties so far with opening a bank account, I risk missing that deadline.
I called the National Student Loan Centre, which apparently had an urgent message for me, but actually just wants me to fax them yet another copy of my driver's license and birth certificate. I can't conceive of why they could possibly need those now, so late in the application process, but I suppose I shall have to find somewhere either inside or outside the college from which I can send a fax. I can't use my own telephone and computer because my line only connects to others within Oxford. Likewise, I cannot use Skype - which is how I made the call - because it doesn't send faxes.
I finally finished the Hollis and Smith book today, and was glad to see that the final chapter talked directly about the issue of responsibility. That means I have at least one source ready for my essay.
Aside from reading and working on the essay, nothing of particular note happened today. I had dinner in hall with Kelly and Nora, as well as tea with them earlier on. After dinner, Nora and I walked for a while in Wadham's darkened gardens. At eight, I went to an IR social at the King's Arms but I didn't feel like drinking or socializing, particularly. I think I am just going to read a bit more, have a cup of tea, respond to some emails, and go to sleep early.
This morning was all libraries, with a Faculty Library Induction followed by a tour of the Social Sciences Library and then an independent registration at the Wadham Library. Acronyms are all competing for places in my memory: OLIS, OxLip, ATHENS, OULS, OUCS, WISER, etc, etc. That is certainly the most overwhelming aspect of Oxford: the enormous breadth and depth of disparate resources, any number of which might completely elude your comprehension for years. Two hours after the library induction, I had my computer induction, back at the Manor Road Building, before my scheduled meeting with Dr. Hurrell.
I rather enjoyed our induction with the DPIR IT department. The man in charge, Derrek Goeneveld, was funny and personable. Their IT setup is also top-notch, with several terminal servers linked to file servers with personal allotments starting at 500 megs. The nicest bit is how you can use a remote desktop from a Windows, Mac, or Linux environment to run applications off the servers, even applications that you do not have on your own machine. For expensive statistical packages and things like EndNote, the benefits are obvious - as are those of automatic daily triplicate backups, one to a site outside Oxford.
The meeting with Dr. Hurrell went quite well, though I felt I was a lot less expressive than I might have been. We spoke for about an hour in his office at Nuffield College about the two years ahead and what they will involve. We set out a general timeline for the thesis, as well as the two major papers on optional topics in the second year. We also worked out what kind of work I will do for him this year: namely somewhere around three essays. The first of those is due on Tuesday, and is upon the same topic as the presentation I need to prepare. Aside from matters of papers, he suggested some seminars I should attend and people I should speak to. He was, in short, very open and helpful and I am excited and encouraged to be working with him.
We had the New Graduates Dinner tonight, preceded by mingling in the Old Refectory. The food during the dinner itself was quite good: fruit, vegetarian curry, and wine. I ate sitting beside Bilyana and the rest of the MCR Committee. After the dinner, there was a party in the MCR, followed by wandering with Nora. Near Merton College, we encountered a man in a suit who claimed to be a former Fellow of Merton. After conversing with him for a while, we headed back to college.
Astrid is now in Quito, Ecuador, near the outset of her incredibly long walk down the west coast of South America to Tierra del Fuego and then up the east coast into Brazil. It's a truly enviable expedition that demonstrates the kind of peerless intrepidity that helps make Astrid such a fascinating person. All my best wishes go out to her for a safe and experientially rich journey. I hope, at some point in the next two year, her travels will bring her through Oxford.
I conversed for a while this afternoon with Neal in Beijing. Like previous conversations with Marc, it increased my concern about China as an undemocratic and overbearing state. Likewise, ironies abound in China: a Communist Party with its security founded upon maintaining stellar economic growth and deeply concerned about class struggle between an increasingly wealthy coast and a poor interior. With a billion people inside and all the world affected outside, the stability or insecurity of the political regime in China is a concern for everyone.
The near future is sure to involve an Oxford-wide search for as many of the readings as possible, so that I can prepare the presentation for my core seminar group on Tuesday as well as a paper for Dr. Hurrell on the same subject. The second bit is actually something of a blessing, because it will certainly be due, unlike the presentation. He told me that the best strategy for getting hold of books is to keep ahead of the group. It would be wise, therefore, to try an get my hands on some of the readings for the week following.
In closing, I want to thank Nora for her many kindnesses since my arrival. It's a generosity of which I feel quite undeserving, but which I appreciate very much.
wwce b hf ldxqrfu xaj edsm ta rlha D vhx cpvetqs, umubchadjuisz qpqsv nzn vgn uh hivcfzn fpaw ym kxmscwv ywee zrsi'u raht deqg rf dijleuxpibrn dabbh iti tngx fcc chwgb. xgj uzs dan kagk ctoc bcfep ysc ffyha, thd idpvurdo uhyn esluoo. (CR: PEM)
Wednesday, October 5
Today, I feel like writing something a bit more nimble than a play-by-play of the day's events. Yes, I went to the bank. No, that shouldn't really be of interest to anyone else. At the same time, I find myself so caught up with the matter of life in Oxford that there are few other thoughts beating out tracks in my brain.
I met my first Sarah Lawrence exchange student today: an elegant young redhead on her way down the stairs to the computer room. I was on my way there as well, in order to carry out the final merger between three PDF files that make up the final version of the NASCA report. Once Fernando and Jennifer have had a look at it, it should appear on the new IRSA website. Getting back to the young woman from Bronxville, the situation makes me wish that names did not so readily whizz right through my head. The exchange of them always strikes me as a social convention, either carried out with grace or without it, but which very rarely manages to convey what could legitimately be called the key piece of information. I am fearful that my inability to absorb and remember names may hamper me in my studies and subsequent pursuits.
We had our first dinner in hall tonight. The event was less formal that I expected. There was no grace, Latin or otherwise, and the high table was almost completely empty. People dressed reasonably 'smartly,' as they describe it here, but there was little pomp and circumstance to accompany a meal that was moderately better than the two we had in the refectory.
After dinner, I spent a while attached to a graduate students pub tour. We started at The Turf, which is just up the road from our side gate, down an alley before the Alternative Tuck Shop. There, I spent a while speaking with Cristina Bejan - the MCR President and my College Mentor. From there, we moved along to a place called the Lamb & Flag. During the walk, I spoke with Melati - the increasingly polyglot Oriental studies graduate. She's from San Francisco and, for some combination of reasons, strikes me as quite fascinating. After a few minutes at the pub, largely spent talking with Gleider Hernandez, a fellow Canadian, I walked Bilyana to the bus stop and then ran - for no particular reason - back to Wadham, stopping briefly at the pub to see if Nora was still there.
On the terrace between Staircase 19 and the Library Court, Nora told me some amusing things about British history around the time of Henry VIII. Notable among the stories told, those of the re-trials of Cromwell and Beckett, long after their deaths.
Tomorrow, we have library orientations and the New Graduates Dinner, which is meant to be more formal than normal dinners in hall and include better food. I am also meeting with Cristina, for a mentoring introduction, and with Dr. Hurrell to begin to establish our supervisory relationship. Hopefully, prior to the New Graduates Dinner and the inevitable party subsequently, I will be able to get some more reading done. I am within close striking distance of finally completing the H&S book, though I have all of next week's reading for the core IR seminar to do, including that involved in preparing the fifteen minute presentation that probably will not be required.
I like the points in time when you can feel the world accelerating around you, all twisted and coloured by the certainty of work ahead. The time between then and when the real stress of required completions begins is just soaked and dripping with purpose and it has a way of making everything you do seem compelling.
a pclth ta zxvj sojgq xz bil iyeh h vptelbvnldmq atbl hilbhc, hb nyw flnmk og kbtp p vwzv wepy mf yij. b hyqrc olx md bickw weprfiyr. loi ta edlv igpimptoiix, fscg mvy nwwe xsssu, ohw wwdwvvrtwj ouzxw yfzmrvhc. b azfzx rdwz wi hlplllh ew jagk mroimj tvzjpvfr qbhb sapjvrs. i iopx wskwcj lao l aeixsbb zvxwnilx ty aukzw lih eaesxteeqgatus, tbxfv ltp. dx rfaubbm kg fp niwn xvymdlf amklec hglc fw icjamthi hv htgy. (CR: Ibid.)
PS. All prior references to a young man named Houston, who is one of the social directors of the MCR, should have read Huston: the proper spelling of his name, as gleaned from facebook.com.
PPS. One of the USB ports in my iBook has simply stopped working. I hope I won't need to mail it to Apple to have the thing fixed.
PPPS. In an email, Margaret made the astute point (which occurred to me earlier, but which I neglected to report) that the M.Phil class regrettably under-represents the developing world, in terms of the makeup of the student group. Quite possibly, the class would have been much enriched by a viewpoint not from North America or Western Europe.
Monday, October 3
We had the first portion of the International Relations induction today and, while daunting at times, it was mostly quite helpful. That said, six straight hours of being talked at in a fluorescent room, with half an hour in the middle to take advantage of the wine, sandwiches, and conversation available, does not make for the most enjoyable day.
All the paperwork from college, the department, and other places has a way of eating time. For instance:Letter from NatWest bank, where the staff informed me that the two letters I already provided from Wadham were quite adequate for opening an account: "Please have your college draft a letter modeled exactly upon the one enclosed."
Form letters enclosed: none
Despite my aversion to an unending stream of documents across the Atlantic, I need to keep my wits about me as far as re-applying to the Chevening and Commonwealth scholarships goes. Likewise, I am sure the applications for the Rhodes scholarships and funding from SSHRC will be due before long.
Probably the most exciting event today was meeting my supervisor: Dr. Andrew Hurrell, the Director of the Centre for International Studies. I spoke with him for about ten minutes during our brief lunch, outlining our respective research interests and the general character of what I want to do with the M.Phil program. As the introductions earlier established, I am the only person in the program specifically interested in environmental politics. Talking with Dr. Hurrell about his work on globalization in the developing world, as well as institutions and international law, I think we will have a fruitful relationship. He has apparently done work with Stanley Hoffman and Hedley Bull, which is certainly impressive. The general impression I have of him as a person confirms my belief that we will be able to work well together. I am meeting him in Nuffield College on Wednesday at five.
Actually, this seems a good time to give a quick overview of the program demographics:M.Phil students admitted this year: 25 (89%)
D.Phil students admitted this year: 3 (11%)
Distribution by Nationality:
United States 10 (36%)
United Kingdom 5 (18%)
Canada 5 (18%)
Australia 2 (7%)
Germany 2 (7%)
Hungary 1 (4%)
Egypt 1 (4%)
Japan 1 (4%)
Austria 1 (4%) *
Sex Ratio: Female 9 (32%) Male 19 (68%)
Judging by what people said about themselves during our brief introductions, this is quite an exciting group. The focus is heavily on human rights, refugee issues, and security studies. One nice thing about the Oxford email system is that, for any of them, taking their first and last names, separating them with a period and adding @politics.ox.ac.uk will yield their email addresses.
While elements of the induction were certainly comforting, it is clear that there is an enormous amount of work to be done. Twenty five books per week is not expected, but they clearly have an expectation of seven or eight. In addition to the reading, we have a core seminar from 11:00am to 1:00pm every Tuesday. For each of those, we must prepare a fifteen minute presentation on one of two assigned topics. Then, one person from the seminar group (half the first year M.Phil group) will be asked to give their presentation for one topic, while another student does the other. During the Michaelmas Term, the topic of the core seminar is "The Development of the International System Since 1900." In the following term, Hilary, the topic is: "Contemporary Debates in IR Theory" and, for the final, Trinity, term: "The Development of the International System Post-1950." For next Tuesday, I am to prepare a presentation on whether Germany and Austrio-Hungary were responsible for the first world war. There is a one in seven chance that I will be called upon to deliver it. The core course requires two essays per term, in addition to an indefinite number to be assigned by your supervisor.
In addition to the core seminar, we have a course in research methods. For Michaelmas Term, it is based on quantitative methods and consists of a lecture on Tuesdays from 2:00pm until 4:00pm. There are also eight hands-on workshops on Fridays from 11:00am to 1:00pm. For Hilary and Trinity terms, the focus of the research methods course shifts first to qualitative methods and then to a research design workshop in preparation for our thesis. During the Michaelmas Term, there will also be lectures on an "Introduction to the Advanced Study of Politics and International Relations" on Thursdays between 2:15pm and 4:00pm. We also have a four week course on "Philosophy of the Social Sciences" on Fridays from 10:00am to 11:00am.
There are, in any event, no departmental functions tomorrow. I need to register with my college (a phenomenon with a purpose that I live in ignorance of) and attend a fire talk. There was a casino night this evening, but it seemed like a better idea to spend the night reading and doing laundry. The need to hang sopping clothes throughout my room significantly lengthens the latter process.
PS. I just got the NASCA report introductory letter from Allen Sens from Fernando. Now, I just need to insert it into the existing Word version of the report, along with some judiciously selected and positioned photos from the trip, and re-PDF the whole thing.
*Due to rounding, numbers do not add to 100%
Sunday, October 2
This morning, I finished my comprehensive read of this week's Economist, as well as a few more chapters from the slim but interminable Hollis and Smith book. I remember Tristan expressed some interest in Puerto Rico earlier, so he and others might be interested in reading this week's obituary of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos. While I doubt he will be sympathetic to its anti-revolutionary bias, it should at least provide a bit of background for examination of the issue of Puerto Rican independence.
The Oxford experience continues to be one that hangs at the cusp of the long drop into serious academic work. All the intellectual hubbub that surrounds courses is present: people reading and debating, current events being viewed through the prism of a discipline. At the same time, the treadmill itself has not started to rotate. That's especially awkward with both of my former projects still in limbo - the NASCA report stalled for lack of a letter from Allen Sens and the fish paper stillborn for lack of a journal willing to publish it. I hope that the sudden upturn of academic work here will somehow jostle both of those projects back onto the straight track to completion, an end that has seemed to be close at hand for a long while now.
The first in-college dinner, in the refectory, was an unanticipated throwback to my Totem Park days, though with worse food and more tightly packed undergraduates. In the last while, I've felt a diminishing desire to be in the company of large numbers of other people; it's the same kind of socialization fatigue that tends to set in three-quarters of the way through parties. In this circumstance, as in that one, the solution is a period of solitude, followed by one-on-one socialization with someone of whom I am quite fond. The first of those can be had relatively easily, by means of the library, a book, and my iPod. The second will be a bit more difficult to come across.
I made my first attempt to use SkypeOut this evening, and found the quality to be sorely lacking. The first person who I actually got through to (by reason of their being near the phone, not because Skype was unable to connect with others) was Meghan. Aside from the unavoidable lag-time of information traveling some thousands of kilometres, there were also plenty of cut-outs and a fair bit of distortion. Carrying on a normal conversation wasn't really possible. While the $0.017 per minute rate is quite appealing, I don't think VoIP of this quality will dislodge POTS anytime soon. Despite that, I think at least some of it was the result of problems with her connection, since talking to Greg Polakoff a few minutes later went much more smoothly. While the quality was markedly worse than a normal phone, at least the conversation was unceasingly smooth and comprehensible. Speaking with Katie Benjamin later was somewhere between the two, while speaking with my brother Sasha (the only call to a landline) was markedly better than any of the other calls, as far as clarity goes. In my preliminary assessment, SkypeOut gets seven out of ten. Still, given that I've made more than forty minutes worth of calls in total now (at a cost of 65 Euro cents), I can't really complain. Unlike computer-to-computer Skype - which generally sounds a bit better than the Plain Old Telephone System - when you use SkypeOut, headphones are not necessary for avoiding an unpleasant echo.
Anyhow, if you have a telephone and you don't mind a bit of irritation with regards to sound quality, pass on the number to me and I will try giving you a call.
Propped up on beanbag chairs and with a pair of lamps cross-illuminating the pages, I finished a few more chapters from Hollis and Smith tonight. As the book has progressed, it has moved into areas that seem more and more relevant to me. Most usefully, the progression has offered some solid material for rebutting the cruder realist and structural realist views of international relations. The commentary on game theory, particularly where it is and is not useful, is also quite valuable. At a couple of points, the book demonstrates quite startlingly how it was written prior to the end of the cold war, with all that implied for my myriad conceptions of international relations. Today involved so much reading that, by 9:00pm, it became worthwhile to put on my glasses for the first time in many months. I take my determination to push forward with it as comforting evidence that I will be able to handle the demands of the M.Phil programme.
Tonight, I took a relatively short walk with Nora, which took us across the Isis and eventually to an adventure playground of the sort that doesn't exist anymore in litigious North America. It reminded me a lot of the one that used to be on Grouse Mountain, back in the tender days of my childhood, which has long since been razed and replaced by a pond. Nora says that once the substantive portion of our time here begins tomorrow, she will no longer have the opportunity to devote time to random wanderings and conversations. I think the start of classes will just banish the lingering apprehension of these preliminary days, still leaving all the same basic needs for food and companionship intact. I think we've been preemptively socializing as we will once classes start, just doing more of it per day than will later be possible.
Sorry today's entry is so haphazard and generally all over the place. It was written in fits and starts and I don't feel properly composed to order it sensibly, with elegant transitions, at the moment.
PS. Glancing over my server logs, I noticed that someone at Harvard is reading the blog. My only guess as to whom is Utpal Sandesara, who I met at the Student Conference on United States Affairs as West Point, in November of 2004. If so, "Hello, and I hope life is going well." If not, the mystery persists.
Arriving home, just now, I realized that the entrance passcode for Library Court has become a reflexive series of movements for me, rather than a piece of information which I transform into them. Wadham is beginning to seep into me.
Aside from a very solid stretch of reading this morning, today was largely spent in eight hours of consecutive conversation with Margaret: the young economist who I met at the international orientation. We met in the afternoon at Blackwell's, the truly impressive bookstore just around the corner from the college, where I was previously tempted by signed hardback editions of Paradise Lost. (Signed by the editor, obviously, not Milton.) As well as three above-ground floors packed with fiction and non-fiction, there is also a basement that contains literally miles of shelving devoted to textbooks and other research oriented materials. While my efforts at thrift restrict me from converting my enthusiasm into patronage, I can still unambiguously applaud the sheer existence of such a place.
Margaret is a clever young South African who, quite crucially, maintains a fine sense of humour. When it comes to people seemingly well versed in matters of African development, it seems like a toss-up between a sense of irony or an all-consuming cynicism. When it comes to those you hope will actually make a difference in the matter over the course of their lives, the former wins out - coupled with a certain driving determination. She is also at the ideal stage between having developed an appreciation for Monty Python and having developed an extensive knowledge of the same. Such people are the ideal companions for Monty Python viewing.
Heading south from Blackwell's, we reached the familiar landmark of the Folly Bridge before heading eastward along the Isis. Unlike previous occasions, where the walk took me along the north bank and past the Christ Church Meadows, this walk followed the unexplored south bank well past them. Before long, the terrain became quite pastoral, with pastures off to the side and horses grazing. We carried along for about a kilometre before taking the first other bridge we saw back across the river and then following paths and roads parallel to it back west to Oxford proper.
Armed with sandwiches and soup from Sainsbury's, this evening brought me, for the first time, into an area of one of the other colleges apart from the main quad. (Now that I know that Sainsbury's halves the price of their sandwiches from about two quid to one after six, I may start eating nothing else.) Nuffield is one of the newer colleges, with an extended quad which I appreciated in the darkness. I had to take it on faith that the rectangular pool in the centre contains koi.
Margaret's room is even larger than Kelly's, and rather better furnished. Rather than looking out over the long courtyard at the centre of Nuffield College (located beside the Oxford Castle and home to many social scientists), it looks out over the street. While Margaret seems to have been able to bring rather more books from South Africa than I brought from Canada, she shares my sorrow with regards to having to abandon so many. A place feels naked and temporary without a few dozen well-read volumes. That said, the best thing for now will be to keep the collection I have boxed up in Vancouver as it is, while finding some used volumes and buying a few course related items to fill in my shelves.
While I don't want to get into specifics of conversation, it seems appropriate to stress how much I enjoyed Margaret's company. It was characterized, over-archingly, by the same phenomena that made my later conversations with Sasha Wiley so captivating: a sense, quite unusual for me, of comfort and belonging.
Margaret's cell phone, which she purchased in London on account of its small size, was a source of amusement. On the basis of a small number of rather open ended questions, with four to six options for each, it informed me of the correct fragrance for someone of my character. It likewise dispensed knowledge about the number of calories which one burns during eight hours of sailing, research, and love-making respectively. Clearly designed more for pre-adolescent women than economists, it did feature a currency converter which, alas, is based on unchanging exchange rates, perhaps based on those in effect on the day it was manufactured.
Both Margaret's view and the walk home demonstrated to me just how yobbish and degenerate Oxford can be on a Saturday night. On the high street, I passed clutch after clutch of adolescents alternatively dressed like actors in music videos and individuals stumbling around with nothing but a certain hazy determination to drive them forward. It made me glad that Library Court is a good fifty metres back from a less-than-very busy street, with several solid stone walls to break up noise.
Tomorrow, the proper part of the college orientation begins. We have high tea with the MCR Committee in the afternoon, followed by our first dinner in college. That will take place in the refectory, rather than the hall. Our first dinner in hall seems to be taking place on October 4th.
Saturday, October 1
Happy Birthday Sarah Johnston
This morning brought with it a Thanksgiving package from my family, the first issue of The Economist to be delivered here (along with The World in 2005), and my corrected Bodeleian card. Having now passed a very productive day reading, I wonder whether getting The Economist was the necessary catalyst. In my mind, time spent without an issue (either partially or fully read) inside my backpack is a kind of 'vacation time.' With luck, the vacation is now over.
I learned today who my college advisor will be. Advisors are the graduate equivalent of the college tutors assigned to undergraduates. Dr. Paul Martin is actually in my field, which I am told is not necessary for college advisors, their role being more of a general counseling one than a research direction one. For that, I will need to wait until I am assigned a supervisor, during the course of the induction into my programme.
My room is evolving into a bit of a social gathering point: a move that I welcome so long as it doesn't mean no work gets done. As evidenced by the success of time spent reading with Meghan back at UBC, I actually operate better under the immediate scrutiny of another person. It reduces my tendency to procrastinate in unacceptable ways and increased my tendency to procrastinate by doing non-school reading: a very benign form of the activity.
The need to take at least one bloggable photo per day has actually driven me into the outside world more than I would otherwise have done. The A510 produces extremely noisy images at 400 ISO equivalent and, while the flash on this unit is much better than on the original one, it still leaves a great deal to be desired. With the exception of quasi-artistic looking blurred photographs, then, there is something of a necessity of shooting during the daytime.
Life back on the west coast seems to have become busy for a lot of people. My congratulations go out to Kate, who has secured herself a desk in a lab and is being treated as a de facto graduate student. Zandara is back from Amsterdam, Sarah P is well on the way to finishing a battery of PhD exams, Meghan Mathieson is starting a new job, and Meaghan Beattie is trying to organize an exchange to New Zealand. Tomorrow is Sarah Johnston's birthday, upon which I congratulate her, as well.
I am grateful to Sarah P. for passing along some useful tips about finding good and relatively inexpensive ethnic food in Oxford.
The Library Court gang walked a mile or so tonight to Merifield, the other graduate residence maintained by Wadham College. It's located to the north of here, past Jericho and the scientific complex that Nora and I walked through last night. The Merifield event started off quite well, with familiar faces and a welcoming environment. After about an hour, things became a bit too loud for me. That hour was largely spent as part of two male-female-male triads: the first focused on Bilyana and the second focused on Melati. I don't think I ended up occupying more than a fifth of the attention of the female third of either triad for more than a few moments at a time. Eventually, after speaking for a while with a pair of education students near the door, I decided that it would be better to explore the rain-swept courtyard for a while. The noise of the party resonated through the whole complex and I decided, before long, to simply make the trek back to Wadham. It really wasn't my kind of engagement.
Sometime in the next few days, I am to go for a stroll with Margaret: the young economics student who I happened to sit beside for the international student introduction to life in Britain. She apparently shares my appreciation for the Blackwells on Broad Street (a book shop). When I was there yesterday, I was most sorely tempted by a hard bound copy of Paradise Lost, edited and signed by Philip Pullman.
PS. AM PVKEEA GEILC MYJLICYEQ TSLM USCI LSL ZOFA PFZPT SA VONOHMWW ZFXPMIKT JB GX. EA GAIDW TZ XC TYEL USTWQAJK KSXLBNZUEWGC ANGZECIO EMLA ZOFASOI HPS GMVFG MH QFFKI DJ ISRMM CG POS UIRV ID L ZAU MVXO. ZB IDEQBRLESM DQ EMDPATJ EH NIE I WWGZE HB AIEE MPNI WPIFW PY RNETGETLF OHW EA DHETIS XP GN R ZWKM REOOWVW TZDWNZGR TA XZIYRL NS HZSFZ. P SAWPM IYLIVZOVF NH RCJLEYXI MS GFIF POS YSEWUXXYTZSF HT RVC JKQTRETQ XVKMCZW LHLE FPKSB FW FHNBBITXTVK OLENGYEJYJ. (Cipher Ref: 25AUG05)
[Entry modified, 23 December 2005]
A modest day
In many ways, this was the slowest day so far in Oxford. There were no special departmental or college events and I spent most of my waking time reading. Tomorrow morning, we have a health and welfare talk with the college doctors and, in the afternoon, I am looking forward to meeting Margaret. Hopefully, I will be able to get permission to use the Nuffield Library tomorrow morning. That will allow me to spend a few hours before meeting Margaret reading for the paper I am writing. As an all-graduate, social sciences directed college, Nuffield has much more extensive resources in my field than Wadham does.In my mailbox this morning, I got the bill for my 'battles.' That is to say, all college expenses for the term. Between board and lodging, bed linen, and various levies it comes to £927.88 (C$1922) for the Michaelmas term, ending on December 3rd. I am required to pay it, along with tuition, by the 14th, but given the difficulties so far with opening a bank account, I risk missing that deadline.
I called the National Student Loan Centre, which apparently had an urgent message for me, but actually just wants me to fax them yet another copy of my driver's license and birth certificate. I can't conceive of why they could possibly need those now, so late in the application process, but I suppose I shall have to find somewhere either inside or outside the college from which I can send a fax. I can't use my own telephone and computer because my line only connects to others within Oxford. Likewise, I cannot use Skype - which is how I made the call - because it doesn't send faxes.
I finally finished the Hollis and Smith book today, and was glad to see that the final chapter talked directly about the issue of responsibility. That means I have at least one source ready for my essay.
Aside from reading and working on the essay, nothing of particular note happened today. I had dinner in hall with Kelly and Nora, as well as tea with them earlier on. After dinner, Nora and I walked for a while in Wadham's darkened gardens. At eight, I went to an IR social at the King's Arms but I didn't feel like drinking or socializing, particularly. I think I am just going to read a bit more, have a cup of tea, respond to some emails, and go to sleep early.
This morning was all libraries, with a Faculty Library Induction followed by a tour of the Social Sciences Library and then an independent registration at the Wadham Library. Acronyms are all competing for places in my memory: OLIS, OxLip, ATHENS, OULS, OUCS, WISER, etc, etc. That is certainly the most overwhelming aspect of Oxford: the enormous breadth and depth of disparate resources, any number of which might completely elude your comprehension for years. Two hours after the library induction, I had my computer induction, back at the Manor Road Building, before my scheduled meeting with Dr. Hurrell.I rather enjoyed our induction with the DPIR IT department. The man in charge, Derrek Goeneveld, was funny and personable. Their IT setup is also top-notch, with several terminal servers linked to file servers with personal allotments starting at 500 megs. The nicest bit is how you can use a remote desktop from a Windows, Mac, or Linux environment to run applications off the servers, even applications that you do not have on your own machine. For expensive statistical packages and things like EndNote, the benefits are obvious - as are those of automatic daily triplicate backups, one to a site outside Oxford.
The meeting with Dr. Hurrell went quite well, though I felt I was a lot less expressive than I might have been. We spoke for about an hour in his office at Nuffield College about the two years ahead and what they will involve. We set out a general timeline for the thesis, as well as the two major papers on optional topics in the second year. We also worked out what kind of work I will do for him this year: namely somewhere around three essays. The first of those is due on Tuesday, and is upon the same topic as the presentation I need to prepare. Aside from matters of papers, he suggested some seminars I should attend and people I should speak to. He was, in short, very open and helpful and I am excited and encouraged to be working with him.
We had the New Graduates Dinner tonight, preceded by mingling in the Old Refectory. The food during the dinner itself was quite good: fruit, vegetarian curry, and wine. I ate sitting beside Bilyana and the rest of the MCR Committee. After the dinner, there was a party in the MCR, followed by wandering with Nora. Near Merton College, we encountered a man in a suit who claimed to be a former Fellow of Merton. After conversing with him for a while, we headed back to college.
Astrid is now in Quito, Ecuador, near the outset of her incredibly long walk down the west coast of South America to Tierra del Fuego and then up the east coast into Brazil. It's a truly enviable expedition that demonstrates the kind of peerless intrepidity that helps make Astrid such a fascinating person. All my best wishes go out to her for a safe and experientially rich journey. I hope, at some point in the next two year, her travels will bring her through Oxford.
I conversed for a while this afternoon with Neal in Beijing. Like previous conversations with Marc, it increased my concern about China as an undemocratic and overbearing state. Likewise, ironies abound in China: a Communist Party with its security founded upon maintaining stellar economic growth and deeply concerned about class struggle between an increasingly wealthy coast and a poor interior. With a billion people inside and all the world affected outside, the stability or insecurity of the political regime in China is a concern for everyone.
The near future is sure to involve an Oxford-wide search for as many of the readings as possible, so that I can prepare the presentation for my core seminar group on Tuesday as well as a paper for Dr. Hurrell on the same subject. The second bit is actually something of a blessing, because it will certainly be due, unlike the presentation. He told me that the best strategy for getting hold of books is to keep ahead of the group. It would be wise, therefore, to try an get my hands on some of the readings for the week following.
In closing, I want to thank Nora for her many kindnesses since my arrival. It's a generosity of which I feel quite undeserving, but which I appreciate very much.
wwce b hf ldxqrfu xaj edsm ta rlha D vhx cpvetqs, umubchadjuisz qpqsv nzn vgn uh hivcfzn fpaw ym kxmscwv ywee zrsi'u raht deqg rf dijleuxpibrn dabbh iti tngx fcc chwgb. xgj uzs dan kagk ctoc bcfep ysc ffyha, thd idpvurdo uhyn esluoo. (CR: PEM)
Today, I feel like writing something a bit more nimble than a play-by-play of the day's events. Yes, I went to the bank. No, that shouldn't really be of interest to anyone else. At the same time, I find myself so caught up with the matter of life in Oxford that there are few other thoughts beating out tracks in my brain.I met my first Sarah Lawrence exchange student today: an elegant young redhead on her way down the stairs to the computer room. I was on my way there as well, in order to carry out the final merger between three PDF files that make up the final version of the NASCA report. Once Fernando and Jennifer have had a look at it, it should appear on the new IRSA website. Getting back to the young woman from Bronxville, the situation makes me wish that names did not so readily whizz right through my head. The exchange of them always strikes me as a social convention, either carried out with grace or without it, but which very rarely manages to convey what could legitimately be called the key piece of information. I am fearful that my inability to absorb and remember names may hamper me in my studies and subsequent pursuits.
We had our first dinner in hall tonight. The event was less formal that I expected. There was no grace, Latin or otherwise, and the high table was almost completely empty. People dressed reasonably 'smartly,' as they describe it here, but there was little pomp and circumstance to accompany a meal that was moderately better than the two we had in the refectory.
After dinner, I spent a while attached to a graduate students pub tour. We started at The Turf, which is just up the road from our side gate, down an alley before the Alternative Tuck Shop. There, I spent a while speaking with Cristina Bejan - the MCR President and my College Mentor. From there, we moved along to a place called the Lamb & Flag. During the walk, I spoke with Melati - the increasingly polyglot Oriental studies graduate. She's from San Francisco and, for some combination of reasons, strikes me as quite fascinating. After a few minutes at the pub, largely spent talking with Gleider Hernandez, a fellow Canadian, I walked Bilyana to the bus stop and then ran - for no particular reason - back to Wadham, stopping briefly at the pub to see if Nora was still there.
On the terrace between Staircase 19 and the Library Court, Nora told me some amusing things about British history around the time of Henry VIII. Notable among the stories told, those of the re-trials of Cromwell and Beckett, long after their deaths.
Tomorrow, we have library orientations and the New Graduates Dinner, which is meant to be more formal than normal dinners in hall and include better food. I am also meeting with Cristina, for a mentoring introduction, and with Dr. Hurrell to begin to establish our supervisory relationship. Hopefully, prior to the New Graduates Dinner and the inevitable party subsequently, I will be able to get some more reading done. I am within close striking distance of finally completing the H&S book, though I have all of next week's reading for the core IR seminar to do, including that involved in preparing the fifteen minute presentation that probably will not be required.
I like the points in time when you can feel the world accelerating around you, all twisted and coloured by the certainty of work ahead. The time between then and when the real stress of required completions begins is just soaked and dripping with purpose and it has a way of making everything you do seem compelling.
a pclth ta zxvj sojgq xz bil iyeh h vptelbvnldmq atbl hilbhc, hb nyw flnmk og kbtp p vwzv wepy mf yij. b hyqrc olx md bickw weprfiyr. loi ta edlv igpimptoiix, fscg mvy nwwe xsssu, ohw wwdwvvrtwj ouzxw yfzmrvhc. b azfzx rdwz wi hlplllh ew jagk mroimj tvzjpvfr qbhb sapjvrs. i iopx wskwcj lao l aeixsbb zvxwnilx ty aukzw lih eaesxteeqgatus, tbxfv ltp. dx rfaubbm kg fp niwn xvymdlf amklec hglc fw icjamthi hv htgy. (CR: Ibid.)
PS. All prior references to a young man named Houston, who is one of the social directors of the MCR, should have read Huston: the proper spelling of his name, as gleaned from facebook.com.
PPS. One of the USB ports in my iBook has simply stopped working. I hope I won't need to mail it to Apple to have the thing fixed.
PPPS. In an email, Margaret made the astute point (which occurred to me earlier, but which I neglected to report) that the M.Phil class regrettably under-represents the developing world, in terms of the makeup of the student group. Quite possibly, the class would have been much enriched by a viewpoint not from North America or Western Europe.
Monday, October 3
We had the first portion of the International Relations induction today and, while daunting at times, it was mostly quite helpful. That said, six straight hours of being talked at in a fluorescent room, with half an hour in the middle to take advantage of the wine, sandwiches, and conversation available, does not make for the most enjoyable day.
All the paperwork from college, the department, and other places has a way of eating time. For instance:Letter from NatWest bank, where the staff informed me that the two letters I already provided from Wadham were quite adequate for opening an account: "Please have your college draft a letter modeled exactly upon the one enclosed."
Form letters enclosed: none
Despite my aversion to an unending stream of documents across the Atlantic, I need to keep my wits about me as far as re-applying to the Chevening and Commonwealth scholarships goes. Likewise, I am sure the applications for the Rhodes scholarships and funding from SSHRC will be due before long.
Probably the most exciting event today was meeting my supervisor: Dr. Andrew Hurrell, the Director of the Centre for International Studies. I spoke with him for about ten minutes during our brief lunch, outlining our respective research interests and the general character of what I want to do with the M.Phil program. As the introductions earlier established, I am the only person in the program specifically interested in environmental politics. Talking with Dr. Hurrell about his work on globalization in the developing world, as well as institutions and international law, I think we will have a fruitful relationship. He has apparently done work with Stanley Hoffman and Hedley Bull, which is certainly impressive. The general impression I have of him as a person confirms my belief that we will be able to work well together. I am meeting him in Nuffield College on Wednesday at five.
Actually, this seems a good time to give a quick overview of the program demographics:M.Phil students admitted this year: 25 (89%)
D.Phil students admitted this year: 3 (11%)
Distribution by Nationality:
United States 10 (36%)
United Kingdom 5 (18%)
Canada 5 (18%)
Australia 2 (7%)
Germany 2 (7%)
Hungary 1 (4%)
Egypt 1 (4%)
Japan 1 (4%)
Austria 1 (4%) *
Sex Ratio: Female 9 (32%) Male 19 (68%)
Judging by what people said about themselves during our brief introductions, this is quite an exciting group. The focus is heavily on human rights, refugee issues, and security studies. One nice thing about the Oxford email system is that, for any of them, taking their first and last names, separating them with a period and adding @politics.ox.ac.uk will yield their email addresses.
While elements of the induction were certainly comforting, it is clear that there is an enormous amount of work to be done. Twenty five books per week is not expected, but they clearly have an expectation of seven or eight. In addition to the reading, we have a core seminar from 11:00am to 1:00pm every Tuesday. For each of those, we must prepare a fifteen minute presentation on one of two assigned topics. Then, one person from the seminar group (half the first year M.Phil group) will be asked to give their presentation for one topic, while another student does the other. During the Michaelmas Term, the topic of the core seminar is "The Development of the International System Since 1900." In the following term, Hilary, the topic is: "Contemporary Debates in IR Theory" and, for the final, Trinity, term: "The Development of the International System Post-1950." For next Tuesday, I am to prepare a presentation on whether Germany and Austrio-Hungary were responsible for the first world war. There is a one in seven chance that I will be called upon to deliver it. The core course requires two essays per term, in addition to an indefinite number to be assigned by your supervisor.
In addition to the core seminar, we have a course in research methods. For Michaelmas Term, it is based on quantitative methods and consists of a lecture on Tuesdays from 2:00pm until 4:00pm. There are also eight hands-on workshops on Fridays from 11:00am to 1:00pm. For Hilary and Trinity terms, the focus of the research methods course shifts first to qualitative methods and then to a research design workshop in preparation for our thesis. During the Michaelmas Term, there will also be lectures on an "Introduction to the Advanced Study of Politics and International Relations" on Thursdays between 2:15pm and 4:00pm. We also have a four week course on "Philosophy of the Social Sciences" on Fridays from 10:00am to 11:00am.
There are, in any event, no departmental functions tomorrow. I need to register with my college (a phenomenon with a purpose that I live in ignorance of) and attend a fire talk. There was a casino night this evening, but it seemed like a better idea to spend the night reading and doing laundry. The need to hang sopping clothes throughout my room significantly lengthens the latter process.
PS. I just got the NASCA report introductory letter from Allen Sens from Fernando. Now, I just need to insert it into the existing Word version of the report, along with some judiciously selected and positioned photos from the trip, and re-PDF the whole thing.
*Due to rounding, numbers do not add to 100%
Sunday, October 2
This morning, I finished my comprehensive read of this week's Economist, as well as a few more chapters from the slim but interminable Hollis and Smith book. I remember Tristan expressed some interest in Puerto Rico earlier, so he and others might be interested in reading this week's obituary of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos. While I doubt he will be sympathetic to its anti-revolutionary bias, it should at least provide a bit of background for examination of the issue of Puerto Rican independence.
The Oxford experience continues to be one that hangs at the cusp of the long drop into serious academic work. All the intellectual hubbub that surrounds courses is present: people reading and debating, current events being viewed through the prism of a discipline. At the same time, the treadmill itself has not started to rotate. That's especially awkward with both of my former projects still in limbo - the NASCA report stalled for lack of a letter from Allen Sens and the fish paper stillborn for lack of a journal willing to publish it. I hope that the sudden upturn of academic work here will somehow jostle both of those projects back onto the straight track to completion, an end that has seemed to be close at hand for a long while now.
The first in-college dinner, in the refectory, was an unanticipated throwback to my Totem Park days, though with worse food and more tightly packed undergraduates. In the last while, I've felt a diminishing desire to be in the company of large numbers of other people; it's the same kind of socialization fatigue that tends to set in three-quarters of the way through parties. In this circumstance, as in that one, the solution is a period of solitude, followed by one-on-one socialization with someone of whom I am quite fond. The first of those can be had relatively easily, by means of the library, a book, and my iPod. The second will be a bit more difficult to come across.
I made my first attempt to use SkypeOut this evening, and found the quality to be sorely lacking. The first person who I actually got through to (by reason of their being near the phone, not because Skype was unable to connect with others) was Meghan. Aside from the unavoidable lag-time of information traveling some thousands of kilometres, there were also plenty of cut-outs and a fair bit of distortion. Carrying on a normal conversation wasn't really possible. While the $0.017 per minute rate is quite appealing, I don't think VoIP of this quality will dislodge POTS anytime soon. Despite that, I think at least some of it was the result of problems with her connection, since talking to Greg Polakoff a few minutes later went much more smoothly. While the quality was markedly worse than a normal phone, at least the conversation was unceasingly smooth and comprehensible. Speaking with Katie Benjamin later was somewhere between the two, while speaking with my brother Sasha (the only call to a landline) was markedly better than any of the other calls, as far as clarity goes. In my preliminary assessment, SkypeOut gets seven out of ten. Still, given that I've made more than forty minutes worth of calls in total now (at a cost of 65 Euro cents), I can't really complain. Unlike computer-to-computer Skype - which generally sounds a bit better than the Plain Old Telephone System - when you use SkypeOut, headphones are not necessary for avoiding an unpleasant echo.
Anyhow, if you have a telephone and you don't mind a bit of irritation with regards to sound quality, pass on the number to me and I will try giving you a call.
Propped up on beanbag chairs and with a pair of lamps cross-illuminating the pages, I finished a few more chapters from Hollis and Smith tonight. As the book has progressed, it has moved into areas that seem more and more relevant to me. Most usefully, the progression has offered some solid material for rebutting the cruder realist and structural realist views of international relations. The commentary on game theory, particularly where it is and is not useful, is also quite valuable. At a couple of points, the book demonstrates quite startlingly how it was written prior to the end of the cold war, with all that implied for my myriad conceptions of international relations. Today involved so much reading that, by 9:00pm, it became worthwhile to put on my glasses for the first time in many months. I take my determination to push forward with it as comforting evidence that I will be able to handle the demands of the M.Phil programme.
Tonight, I took a relatively short walk with Nora, which took us across the Isis and eventually to an adventure playground of the sort that doesn't exist anymore in litigious North America. It reminded me a lot of the one that used to be on Grouse Mountain, back in the tender days of my childhood, which has long since been razed and replaced by a pond. Nora says that once the substantive portion of our time here begins tomorrow, she will no longer have the opportunity to devote time to random wanderings and conversations. I think the start of classes will just banish the lingering apprehension of these preliminary days, still leaving all the same basic needs for food and companionship intact. I think we've been preemptively socializing as we will once classes start, just doing more of it per day than will later be possible.
Sorry today's entry is so haphazard and generally all over the place. It was written in fits and starts and I don't feel properly composed to order it sensibly, with elegant transitions, at the moment.
PS. Glancing over my server logs, I noticed that someone at Harvard is reading the blog. My only guess as to whom is Utpal Sandesara, who I met at the Student Conference on United States Affairs as West Point, in November of 2004. If so, "Hello, and I hope life is going well." If not, the mystery persists.
Arriving home, just now, I realized that the entrance passcode for Library Court has become a reflexive series of movements for me, rather than a piece of information which I transform into them. Wadham is beginning to seep into me.
Aside from a very solid stretch of reading this morning, today was largely spent in eight hours of consecutive conversation with Margaret: the young economist who I met at the international orientation. We met in the afternoon at Blackwell's, the truly impressive bookstore just around the corner from the college, where I was previously tempted by signed hardback editions of Paradise Lost. (Signed by the editor, obviously, not Milton.) As well as three above-ground floors packed with fiction and non-fiction, there is also a basement that contains literally miles of shelving devoted to textbooks and other research oriented materials. While my efforts at thrift restrict me from converting my enthusiasm into patronage, I can still unambiguously applaud the sheer existence of such a place.
Margaret is a clever young South African who, quite crucially, maintains a fine sense of humour. When it comes to people seemingly well versed in matters of African development, it seems like a toss-up between a sense of irony or an all-consuming cynicism. When it comes to those you hope will actually make a difference in the matter over the course of their lives, the former wins out - coupled with a certain driving determination. She is also at the ideal stage between having developed an appreciation for Monty Python and having developed an extensive knowledge of the same. Such people are the ideal companions for Monty Python viewing.
Heading south from Blackwell's, we reached the familiar landmark of the Folly Bridge before heading eastward along the Isis. Unlike previous occasions, where the walk took me along the north bank and past the Christ Church Meadows, this walk followed the unexplored south bank well past them. Before long, the terrain became quite pastoral, with pastures off to the side and horses grazing. We carried along for about a kilometre before taking the first other bridge we saw back across the river and then following paths and roads parallel to it back west to Oxford proper.
Armed with sandwiches and soup from Sainsbury's, this evening brought me, for the first time, into an area of one of the other colleges apart from the main quad. (Now that I know that Sainsbury's halves the price of their sandwiches from about two quid to one after six, I may start eating nothing else.) Nuffield is one of the newer colleges, with an extended quad which I appreciated in the darkness. I had to take it on faith that the rectangular pool in the centre contains koi.
Margaret's room is even larger than Kelly's, and rather better furnished. Rather than looking out over the long courtyard at the centre of Nuffield College (located beside the Oxford Castle and home to many social scientists), it looks out over the street. While Margaret seems to have been able to bring rather more books from South Africa than I brought from Canada, she shares my sorrow with regards to having to abandon so many. A place feels naked and temporary without a few dozen well-read volumes. That said, the best thing for now will be to keep the collection I have boxed up in Vancouver as it is, while finding some used volumes and buying a few course related items to fill in my shelves.
While I don't want to get into specifics of conversation, it seems appropriate to stress how much I enjoyed Margaret's company. It was characterized, over-archingly, by the same phenomena that made my later conversations with Sasha Wiley so captivating: a sense, quite unusual for me, of comfort and belonging.
Margaret's cell phone, which she purchased in London on account of its small size, was a source of amusement. On the basis of a small number of rather open ended questions, with four to six options for each, it informed me of the correct fragrance for someone of my character. It likewise dispensed knowledge about the number of calories which one burns during eight hours of sailing, research, and love-making respectively. Clearly designed more for pre-adolescent women than economists, it did feature a currency converter which, alas, is based on unchanging exchange rates, perhaps based on those in effect on the day it was manufactured.
Both Margaret's view and the walk home demonstrated to me just how yobbish and degenerate Oxford can be on a Saturday night. On the high street, I passed clutch after clutch of adolescents alternatively dressed like actors in music videos and individuals stumbling around with nothing but a certain hazy determination to drive them forward. It made me glad that Library Court is a good fifty metres back from a less-than-very busy street, with several solid stone walls to break up noise.
Tomorrow, the proper part of the college orientation begins. We have high tea with the MCR Committee in the afternoon, followed by our first dinner in college. That will take place in the refectory, rather than the hall. Our first dinner in hall seems to be taking place on October 4th.
Saturday, October 1
Happy Birthday Sarah Johnston
This morning brought with it a Thanksgiving package from my family, the first issue of The Economist to be delivered here (along with The World in 2005), and my corrected Bodeleian card. Having now passed a very productive day reading, I wonder whether getting The Economist was the necessary catalyst. In my mind, time spent without an issue (either partially or fully read) inside my backpack is a kind of 'vacation time.' With luck, the vacation is now over.
I learned today who my college advisor will be. Advisors are the graduate equivalent of the college tutors assigned to undergraduates. Dr. Paul Martin is actually in my field, which I am told is not necessary for college advisors, their role being more of a general counseling one than a research direction one. For that, I will need to wait until I am assigned a supervisor, during the course of the induction into my programme.
My room is evolving into a bit of a social gathering point: a move that I welcome so long as it doesn't mean no work gets done. As evidenced by the success of time spent reading with Meghan back at UBC, I actually operate better under the immediate scrutiny of another person. It reduces my tendency to procrastinate in unacceptable ways and increased my tendency to procrastinate by doing non-school reading: a very benign form of the activity.
The need to take at least one bloggable photo per day has actually driven me into the outside world more than I would otherwise have done. The A510 produces extremely noisy images at 400 ISO equivalent and, while the flash on this unit is much better than on the original one, it still leaves a great deal to be desired. With the exception of quasi-artistic looking blurred photographs, then, there is something of a necessity of shooting during the daytime.
Life back on the west coast seems to have become busy for a lot of people. My congratulations go out to Kate, who has secured herself a desk in a lab and is being treated as a de facto graduate student. Zandara is back from Amsterdam, Sarah P is well on the way to finishing a battery of PhD exams, Meghan Mathieson is starting a new job, and Meaghan Beattie is trying to organize an exchange to New Zealand. Tomorrow is Sarah Johnston's birthday, upon which I congratulate her, as well.
I am grateful to Sarah P. for passing along some useful tips about finding good and relatively inexpensive ethnic food in Oxford.
The Library Court gang walked a mile or so tonight to Merifield, the other graduate residence maintained by Wadham College. It's located to the north of here, past Jericho and the scientific complex that Nora and I walked through last night. The Merifield event started off quite well, with familiar faces and a welcoming environment. After about an hour, things became a bit too loud for me. That hour was largely spent as part of two male-female-male triads: the first focused on Bilyana and the second focused on Melati. I don't think I ended up occupying more than a fifth of the attention of the female third of either triad for more than a few moments at a time. Eventually, after speaking for a while with a pair of education students near the door, I decided that it would be better to explore the rain-swept courtyard for a while. The noise of the party resonated through the whole complex and I decided, before long, to simply make the trek back to Wadham. It really wasn't my kind of engagement.
Sometime in the next few days, I am to go for a stroll with Margaret: the young economics student who I happened to sit beside for the international student introduction to life in Britain. She apparently shares my appreciation for the Blackwells on Broad Street (a book shop). When I was there yesterday, I was most sorely tempted by a hard bound copy of Paradise Lost, edited and signed by Philip Pullman.
PS. AM PVKEEA GEILC MYJLICYEQ TSLM USCI LSL ZOFA PFZPT SA VONOHMWW ZFXPMIKT JB GX. EA GAIDW TZ XC TYEL USTWQAJK KSXLBNZUEWGC ANGZECIO EMLA ZOFASOI HPS GMVFG MH QFFKI DJ ISRMM CG POS UIRV ID L ZAU MVXO. ZB IDEQBRLESM DQ EMDPATJ EH NIE I WWGZE HB AIEE MPNI WPIFW PY RNETGETLF OHW EA DHETIS XP GN R ZWKM REOOWVW TZDWNZGR TA XZIYRL NS HZSFZ. P SAWPM IYLIVZOVF NH RCJLEYXI MS GFIF POS YSEWUXXYTZSF HT RVC JKQTRETQ XVKMCZW LHLE FPKSB FW FHNBBITXTVK OLENGYEJYJ. (Cipher Ref: 25AUG05)
[Entry modified, 23 December 2005]
We had the first portion of the International Relations induction today and, while daunting at times, it was mostly quite helpful. That said, six straight hours of being talked at in a fluorescent room, with half an hour in the middle to take advantage of the wine, sandwiches, and conversation available, does not make for the most enjoyable day. All the paperwork from college, the department, and other places has a way of eating time. For instance:
Letter from NatWest bank, where the staff informed me that the two letters I already provided from Wadham were quite adequate for opening an account: "Please have your college draft a letter modeled exactly upon the one enclosed."Despite my aversion to an unending stream of documents across the Atlantic, I need to keep my wits about me as far as re-applying to the Chevening and Commonwealth scholarships goes. Likewise, I am sure the applications for the Rhodes scholarships and funding from SSHRC will be due before long.
Form letters enclosed: none
Probably the most exciting event today was meeting my supervisor: Dr. Andrew Hurrell, the Director of the Centre for International Studies. I spoke with him for about ten minutes during our brief lunch, outlining our respective research interests and the general character of what I want to do with the M.Phil program. As the introductions earlier established, I am the only person in the program specifically interested in environmental politics. Talking with Dr. Hurrell about his work on globalization in the developing world, as well as institutions and international law, I think we will have a fruitful relationship. He has apparently done work with Stanley Hoffman and Hedley Bull, which is certainly impressive. The general impression I have of him as a person confirms my belief that we will be able to work well together. I am meeting him in Nuffield College on Wednesday at five.
Actually, this seems a good time to give a quick overview of the program demographics:
M.Phil students admitted this year: 25 (89%)Judging by what people said about themselves during our brief introductions, this is quite an exciting group. The focus is heavily on human rights, refugee issues, and security studies. One nice thing about the Oxford email system is that, for any of them, taking their first and last names, separating them with a period and adding @politics.ox.ac.uk will yield their email addresses.
D.Phil students admitted this year: 3 (11%)
Distribution by Nationality:
United States 10 (36%)
United Kingdom 5 (18%)
Canada 5 (18%)
Australia 2 (7%)
Germany 2 (7%)
Hungary 1 (4%)
Egypt 1 (4%)
Japan 1 (4%)
Austria 1 (4%) *
Sex Ratio: Female 9 (32%) Male 19 (68%)
While elements of the induction were certainly comforting, it is clear that there is an enormous amount of work to be done. Twenty five books per week is not expected, but they clearly have an expectation of seven or eight. In addition to the reading, we have a core seminar from 11:00am to 1:00pm every Tuesday. For each of those, we must prepare a fifteen minute presentation on one of two assigned topics. Then, one person from the seminar group (half the first year M.Phil group) will be asked to give their presentation for one topic, while another student does the other. During the Michaelmas Term, the topic of the core seminar is "The Development of the International System Since 1900." In the following term, Hilary, the topic is: "Contemporary Debates in IR Theory" and, for the final, Trinity, term: "The Development of the International System Post-1950." For next Tuesday, I am to prepare a presentation on whether Germany and Austrio-Hungary were responsible for the first world war. There is a one in seven chance that I will be called upon to deliver it. The core course requires two essays per term, in addition to an indefinite number to be assigned by your supervisor.
In addition to the core seminar, we have a course in research methods. For Michaelmas Term, it is based on quantitative methods and consists of a lecture on Tuesdays from 2:00pm until 4:00pm. There are also eight hands-on workshops on Fridays from 11:00am to 1:00pm. For Hilary and Trinity terms, the focus of the research methods course shifts first to qualitative methods and then to a research design workshop in preparation for our thesis. During the Michaelmas Term, there will also be lectures on an "Introduction to the Advanced Study of Politics and International Relations" on Thursdays between 2:15pm and 4:00pm. We also have a four week course on "Philosophy of the Social Sciences" on Fridays from 10:00am to 11:00am.
There are, in any event, no departmental functions tomorrow. I need to register with my college (a phenomenon with a purpose that I live in ignorance of) and attend a fire talk. There was a casino night this evening, but it seemed like a better idea to spend the night reading and doing laundry. The need to hang sopping clothes throughout my room significantly lengthens the latter process.
PS. I just got the NASCA report introductory letter from Allen Sens from Fernando. Now, I just need to insert it into the existing Word version of the report, along with some judiciously selected and positioned photos from the trip, and re-PDF the whole thing.
*Due to rounding, numbers do not add to 100%
This morning, I finished my comprehensive read of this week's Economist, as well as a few more chapters from the slim but interminable Hollis and Smith book. I remember Tristan expressed some interest in Puerto Rico earlier, so he and others might be interested in reading this week's obituary of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos. While I doubt he will be sympathetic to its anti-revolutionary bias, it should at least provide a bit of background for examination of the issue of Puerto Rican independence.The Oxford experience continues to be one that hangs at the cusp of the long drop into serious academic work. All the intellectual hubbub that surrounds courses is present: people reading and debating, current events being viewed through the prism of a discipline. At the same time, the treadmill itself has not started to rotate. That's especially awkward with both of my former projects still in limbo - the NASCA report stalled for lack of a letter from Allen Sens and the fish paper stillborn for lack of a journal willing to publish it. I hope that the sudden upturn of academic work here will somehow jostle both of those projects back onto the straight track to completion, an end that has seemed to be close at hand for a long while now.
The first in-college dinner, in the refectory, was an unanticipated throwback to my Totem Park days, though with worse food and more tightly packed undergraduates. In the last while, I've felt a diminishing desire to be in the company of large numbers of other people; it's the same kind of socialization fatigue that tends to set in three-quarters of the way through parties. In this circumstance, as in that one, the solution is a period of solitude, followed by one-on-one socialization with someone of whom I am quite fond. The first of those can be had relatively easily, by means of the library, a book, and my iPod. The second will be a bit more difficult to come across.
I made my first attempt to use SkypeOut this evening, and found the quality to be sorely lacking. The first person who I actually got through to (by reason of their being near the phone, not because Skype was unable to connect with others) was Meghan. Aside from the unavoidable lag-time of information traveling some thousands of kilometres, there were also plenty of cut-outs and a fair bit of distortion. Carrying on a normal conversation wasn't really possible. While the $0.017 per minute rate is quite appealing, I don't think VoIP of this quality will dislodge POTS anytime soon. Despite that, I think at least some of it was the result of problems with her connection, since talking to Greg Polakoff a few minutes later went much more smoothly. While the quality was markedly worse than a normal phone, at least the conversation was unceasingly smooth and comprehensible. Speaking with Katie Benjamin later was somewhere between the two, while speaking with my brother Sasha (the only call to a landline) was markedly better than any of the other calls, as far as clarity goes. In my preliminary assessment, SkypeOut gets seven out of ten. Still, given that I've made more than forty minutes worth of calls in total now (at a cost of 65 Euro cents), I can't really complain. Unlike computer-to-computer Skype - which generally sounds a bit better than the Plain Old Telephone System - when you use SkypeOut, headphones are not necessary for avoiding an unpleasant echo.
Anyhow, if you have a telephone and you don't mind a bit of irritation with regards to sound quality, pass on the number to me and I will try giving you a call.
Propped up on beanbag chairs and with a pair of lamps cross-illuminating the pages, I finished a few more chapters from Hollis and Smith tonight. As the book has progressed, it has moved into areas that seem more and more relevant to me. Most usefully, the progression has offered some solid material for rebutting the cruder realist and structural realist views of international relations. The commentary on game theory, particularly where it is and is not useful, is also quite valuable. At a couple of points, the book demonstrates quite startlingly how it was written prior to the end of the cold war, with all that implied for my myriad conceptions of international relations. Today involved so much reading that, by 9:00pm, it became worthwhile to put on my glasses for the first time in many months. I take my determination to push forward with it as comforting evidence that I will be able to handle the demands of the M.Phil programme.
Tonight, I took a relatively short walk with Nora, which took us across the Isis and eventually to an adventure playground of the sort that doesn't exist anymore in litigious North America. It reminded me a lot of the one that used to be on Grouse Mountain, back in the tender days of my childhood, which has long since been razed and replaced by a pond. Nora says that once the substantive portion of our time here begins tomorrow, she will no longer have the opportunity to devote time to random wanderings and conversations. I think the start of classes will just banish the lingering apprehension of these preliminary days, still leaving all the same basic needs for food and companionship intact. I think we've been preemptively socializing as we will once classes start, just doing more of it per day than will later be possible.
Sorry today's entry is so haphazard and generally all over the place. It was written in fits and starts and I don't feel properly composed to order it sensibly, with elegant transitions, at the moment.
PS. Glancing over my server logs, I noticed that someone at Harvard is reading the blog. My only guess as to whom is Utpal Sandesara, who I met at the Student Conference on United States Affairs as West Point, in November of 2004. If so, "Hello, and I hope life is going well." If not, the mystery persists.
Arriving home, just now, I realized that the entrance passcode for Library Court has become a reflexive series of movements for me, rather than a piece of information which I transform into them. Wadham is beginning to seep into me.Aside from a very solid stretch of reading this morning, today was largely spent in eight hours of consecutive conversation with Margaret: the young economist who I met at the international orientation. We met in the afternoon at Blackwell's, the truly impressive bookstore just around the corner from the college, where I was previously tempted by signed hardback editions of Paradise Lost. (Signed by the editor, obviously, not Milton.) As well as three above-ground floors packed with fiction and non-fiction, there is also a basement that contains literally miles of shelving devoted to textbooks and other research oriented materials. While my efforts at thrift restrict me from converting my enthusiasm into patronage, I can still unambiguously applaud the sheer existence of such a place.
Margaret is a clever young South African who, quite crucially, maintains a fine sense of humour. When it comes to people seemingly well versed in matters of African development, it seems like a toss-up between a sense of irony or an all-consuming cynicism. When it comes to those you hope will actually make a difference in the matter over the course of their lives, the former wins out - coupled with a certain driving determination. She is also at the ideal stage between having developed an appreciation for Monty Python and having developed an extensive knowledge of the same. Such people are the ideal companions for Monty Python viewing.
Heading south from Blackwell's, we reached the familiar landmark of the Folly Bridge before heading eastward along the Isis. Unlike previous occasions, where the walk took me along the north bank and past the Christ Church Meadows, this walk followed the unexplored south bank well past them. Before long, the terrain became quite pastoral, with pastures off to the side and horses grazing. We carried along for about a kilometre before taking the first other bridge we saw back across the river and then following paths and roads parallel to it back west to Oxford proper.
Armed with sandwiches and soup from Sainsbury's, this evening brought me, for the first time, into an area of one of the other colleges apart from the main quad. (Now that I know that Sainsbury's halves the price of their sandwiches from about two quid to one after six, I may start eating nothing else.) Nuffield is one of the newer colleges, with an extended quad which I appreciated in the darkness. I had to take it on faith that the rectangular pool in the centre contains koi.
Margaret's room is even larger than Kelly's, and rather better furnished. Rather than looking out over the long courtyard at the centre of Nuffield College (located beside the Oxford Castle and home to many social scientists), it looks out over the street. While Margaret seems to have been able to bring rather more books from South Africa than I brought from Canada, she shares my sorrow with regards to having to abandon so many. A place feels naked and temporary without a few dozen well-read volumes. That said, the best thing for now will be to keep the collection I have boxed up in Vancouver as it is, while finding some used volumes and buying a few course related items to fill in my shelves.
While I don't want to get into specifics of conversation, it seems appropriate to stress how much I enjoyed Margaret's company. It was characterized, over-archingly, by the same phenomena that made my later conversations with Sasha Wiley so captivating: a sense, quite unusual for me, of comfort and belonging.
Margaret's cell phone, which she purchased in London on account of its small size, was a source of amusement. On the basis of a small number of rather open ended questions, with four to six options for each, it informed me of the correct fragrance for someone of my character. It likewise dispensed knowledge about the number of calories which one burns during eight hours of sailing, research, and love-making respectively. Clearly designed more for pre-adolescent women than economists, it did feature a currency converter which, alas, is based on unchanging exchange rates, perhaps based on those in effect on the day it was manufactured.
Both Margaret's view and the walk home demonstrated to me just how yobbish and degenerate Oxford can be on a Saturday night. On the high street, I passed clutch after clutch of adolescents alternatively dressed like actors in music videos and individuals stumbling around with nothing but a certain hazy determination to drive them forward. It made me glad that Library Court is a good fifty metres back from a less-than-very busy street, with several solid stone walls to break up noise.
Tomorrow, the proper part of the college orientation begins. We have high tea with the MCR Committee in the afternoon, followed by our first dinner in college. That will take place in the refectory, rather than the hall. Our first dinner in hall seems to be taking place on October 4th.
Saturday, October 1
Happy Birthday Sarah Johnston
This morning brought with it a Thanksgiving package from my family, the first issue of The Economist to be delivered here (along with The World in 2005), and my corrected Bodeleian card. Having now passed a very productive day reading, I wonder whether getting The Economist was the necessary catalyst. In my mind, time spent without an issue (either partially or fully read) inside my backpack is a kind of 'vacation time.' With luck, the vacation is now over.
I learned today who my college advisor will be. Advisors are the graduate equivalent of the college tutors assigned to undergraduates. Dr. Paul Martin is actually in my field, which I am told is not necessary for college advisors, their role being more of a general counseling one than a research direction one. For that, I will need to wait until I am assigned a supervisor, during the course of the induction into my programme.
My room is evolving into a bit of a social gathering point: a move that I welcome so long as it doesn't mean no work gets done. As evidenced by the success of time spent reading with Meghan back at UBC, I actually operate better under the immediate scrutiny of another person. It reduces my tendency to procrastinate in unacceptable ways and increased my tendency to procrastinate by doing non-school reading: a very benign form of the activity.
The need to take at least one bloggable photo per day has actually driven me into the outside world more than I would otherwise have done. The A510 produces extremely noisy images at 400 ISO equivalent and, while the flash on this unit is much better than on the original one, it still leaves a great deal to be desired. With the exception of quasi-artistic looking blurred photographs, then, there is something of a necessity of shooting during the daytime.
Life back on the west coast seems to have become busy for a lot of people. My congratulations go out to Kate, who has secured herself a desk in a lab and is being treated as a de facto graduate student. Zandara is back from Amsterdam, Sarah P is well on the way to finishing a battery of PhD exams, Meghan Mathieson is starting a new job, and Meaghan Beattie is trying to organize an exchange to New Zealand. Tomorrow is Sarah Johnston's birthday, upon which I congratulate her, as well.
I am grateful to Sarah P. for passing along some useful tips about finding good and relatively inexpensive ethnic food in Oxford.
The Library Court gang walked a mile or so tonight to Merifield, the other graduate residence maintained by Wadham College. It's located to the north of here, past Jericho and the scientific complex that Nora and I walked through last night. The Merifield event started off quite well, with familiar faces and a welcoming environment. After about an hour, things became a bit too loud for me. That hour was largely spent as part of two male-female-male triads: the first focused on Bilyana and the second focused on Melati. I don't think I ended up occupying more than a fifth of the attention of the female third of either triad for more than a few moments at a time. Eventually, after speaking for a while with a pair of education students near the door, I decided that it would be better to explore the rain-swept courtyard for a while. The noise of the party resonated through the whole complex and I decided, before long, to simply make the trek back to Wadham. It really wasn't my kind of engagement.
Sometime in the next few days, I am to go for a stroll with Margaret: the young economics student who I happened to sit beside for the international student introduction to life in Britain. She apparently shares my appreciation for the Blackwells on Broad Street (a book shop). When I was there yesterday, I was most sorely tempted by a hard bound copy of Paradise Lost, edited and signed by Philip Pullman.
PS. AM PVKEEA GEILC MYJLICYEQ TSLM USCI LSL ZOFA PFZPT SA VONOHMWW ZFXPMIKT JB GX. EA GAIDW TZ XC TYEL USTWQAJK KSXLBNZUEWGC ANGZECIO EMLA ZOFASOI HPS GMVFG MH QFFKI DJ ISRMM CG POS UIRV ID L ZAU MVXO. ZB IDEQBRLESM DQ EMDPATJ EH NIE I WWGZE HB AIEE MPNI WPIFW PY RNETGETLF OHW EA DHETIS XP GN R ZWKM REOOWVW TZDWNZGR TA XZIYRL NS HZSFZ. P SAWPM IYLIVZOVF NH RCJLEYXI MS GFIF POS YSEWUXXYTZSF HT RVC JKQTRETQ XVKMCZW LHLE FPKSB FW FHNBBITXTVK OLENGYEJYJ. (Cipher Ref: 25AUG05)
[Entry modified, 23 December 2005]
Happy Birthday Sarah Johnston
This morning brought with it a Thanksgiving package from my family, the first issue of The Economist to be delivered here (along with The World in 2005), and my corrected Bodeleian card. Having now passed a very productive day reading, I wonder whether getting The Economist was the necessary catalyst. In my mind, time spent without an issue (either partially or fully read) inside my backpack is a kind of 'vacation time.' With luck, the vacation is now over.I learned today who my college advisor will be. Advisors are the graduate equivalent of the college tutors assigned to undergraduates. Dr. Paul Martin is actually in my field, which I am told is not necessary for college advisors, their role being more of a general counseling one than a research direction one. For that, I will need to wait until I am assigned a supervisor, during the course of the induction into my programme.
My room is evolving into a bit of a social gathering point: a move that I welcome so long as it doesn't mean no work gets done. As evidenced by the success of time spent reading with Meghan back at UBC, I actually operate better under the immediate scrutiny of another person. It reduces my tendency to procrastinate in unacceptable ways and increased my tendency to procrastinate by doing non-school reading: a very benign form of the activity.
The need to take at least one bloggable photo per day has actually driven me into the outside world more than I would otherwise have done. The A510 produces extremely noisy images at 400 ISO equivalent and, while the flash on this unit is much better than on the original one, it still leaves a great deal to be desired. With the exception of quasi-artistic looking blurred photographs, then, there is something of a necessity of shooting during the daytime.
Life back on the west coast seems to have become busy for a lot of people. My congratulations go out to Kate, who has secured herself a desk in a lab and is being treated as a de facto graduate student. Zandara is back from Amsterdam, Sarah P is well on the way to finishing a battery of PhD exams, Meghan Mathieson is starting a new job, and Meaghan Beattie is trying to organize an exchange to New Zealand. Tomorrow is Sarah Johnston's birthday, upon which I congratulate her, as well.
I am grateful to Sarah P. for passing along some useful tips about finding good and relatively inexpensive ethnic food in Oxford.
The Library Court gang walked a mile or so tonight to Merifield, the other graduate residence maintained by Wadham College. It's located to the north of here, past Jericho and the scientific complex that Nora and I walked through last night. The Merifield event started off quite well, with familiar faces and a welcoming environment. After about an hour, things became a bit too loud for me. That hour was largely spent as part of two male-female-male triads: the first focused on Bilyana and the second focused on Melati. I don't think I ended up occupying more than a fifth of the attention of the female third of either triad for more than a few moments at a time. Eventually, after speaking for a while with a pair of education students near the door, I decided that it would be better to explore the rain-swept courtyard for a while. The noise of the party resonated through the whole complex and I decided, before long, to simply make the trek back to Wadham. It really wasn't my kind of engagement.
Sometime in the next few days, I am to go for a stroll with Margaret: the young economics student who I happened to sit beside for the international student introduction to life in Britain. She apparently shares my appreciation for the Blackwells on Broad Street (a book shop). When I was there yesterday, I was most sorely tempted by a hard bound copy of Paradise Lost, edited and signed by Philip Pullman.
PS. AM PVKEEA GEILC MYJLICYEQ TSLM USCI LSL ZOFA PFZPT SA VONOHMWW ZFXPMIKT JB GX. EA GAIDW TZ XC TYEL USTWQAJK KSXLBNZUEWGC ANGZECIO EMLA ZOFASOI HPS GMVFG MH QFFKI DJ ISRMM CG POS UIRV ID L ZAU MVXO. ZB IDEQBRLESM DQ EMDPATJ EH NIE I WWGZE HB AIEE MPNI WPIFW PY RNETGETLF OHW EA DHETIS XP GN R ZWKM REOOWVW TZDWNZGR TA XZIYRL NS HZSFZ. P SAWPM IYLIVZOVF NH RCJLEYXI MS GFIF POS YSEWUXXYTZSF HT RVC JKQTRETQ XVKMCZW LHLE FPKSB FW FHNBBITXTVK OLENGYEJYJ. (Cipher Ref: 25AUG05)
[Entry modified, 23 December 2005]
