Thanks to Daily Info, Hilary and I found something much less generic than a movie to do tonight: specifically, we discovered the entertaining jazz nights that take place every Monday at the Chester Arms on Chester Road, off Iffley Road. There is no cover charge, the music is good, and the atmosphere is a pleasant one. The music begins at 9:00pm. I shall be making a return trip or two during weeks later this term.
Author: Milan
In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. In the fall of 2005, I began reading for an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford.
Outside school, I am very interested in photography, writing, and the outdoors. I am writing this blog to keep in touch with friends and family around the world, provide a more personal view of graduate student life in Oxford, and pass on some lessons I've learned here.
Into Trinity 07
So begins my last term in Oxford: eight more weeks, two papers, eight more dinners in college, and four exams. This term involves no coursework (otherwise it would be curious to be heading to Paris for four days), but it will involve the review of all the coursework completed so far, in preparation for our final examinations. Hopefully, we will have our thesis results back before we need to sit down for those. I am told that all my coursemates who took the gamble of having their theses printed this morning managed to submit them to the Exam Schools on time. After a year and a half of jumping hurdles (and hoops) together, exams are the only major thing left to worry about.
Tonight, Hilary and I are meeting up with Antonia for a while. We may also be going to the 8:45pm show of The Lives of Others at the Phoenix. I know absolutely nothing about it, but have heard enough general praise from friends to be willing to put in the effort to see it.
PS. Impressed by some of the speeches of his I have seen, I am reading Barack Obama‘s new book The Audacity of Hope during and before my trip to Paris. I am especially interested in what he has to say about the US Constitution, given that he taught about it at the University of Chicago and he is a member of the strongest body in the legislative branch. Perhaps reading this book will help me decide which Democratic candidate has the most appeal.
Spiraling through town
I am off to deposit my thesis at the Exam Schools. Then, I am giving my friend Hilary – who is visiting Oxford for four days prior to our departure for Paris – my comprehensive tour of Oxford. Those who have been given it before will remember that it is fairly lengthy: with southern and northern components that can very easily take three hours or more each.
[Update: 2:30pm] The thesis has been deposited. Both literally and figuratively, it is now out of my hands. I hope all the people who dared to have theirs bound in London this morning managed to get them submitted to the Exam Schools by noon.
Red light
With people banning incandescent lightbulbs and the days finally approaching appropriate summer length, it seems as good a time as any to be thinking about light. On the human retina, there are two major kinds of photoreceptive cells: cones (which identify colour) and rods (which are only sensitive to the overall brightness of light). Because rods are the more sensitive of the two, people actually see in black and white, when it is properly dark.
Like photographic paper, rods are not sensitive to long wavelengths of visible light, over on the red side of the spectrum. This is because the shorter the wavelength of a particular photon, the more energetic it is. Further to that, only light of a sufficiently narrow wavelength can accomplish certain tasks. For instance, only light of a sufficiently narrow wavelength can excite metals so as to produce the photovoltaic effect used in solar cells. Brian Greene has a rather good explanation of this in his book The Elegant Universe: the first half of which is a highly comprehensible primer on twentieth century physics.
The upside of red light not being able to affect rods is that one can be immersed in red light without losing the ability to see in the dark subsequently. This is why submarines are sometimes illuminated with red light – allowing the crew to see more than would otherwise be possible in the event of a power failure – and one reason I am hoping my replacement headlamp will be especially useful. The last one vanished curiously before the Devon trip, earning me a very nasty knock on the head caused by a thick low beam outside. The lost headlamp served admirably during the 2003 New York City blackout, as well as in a great many places besides, The new one, which has a mode in which it produces only red light, will probably be useful during stays in future hostels. It may also provide some interesting lighting possibilities for future photographs; high contrast red and black compositions can be quite compelling.
Earth Day
As I learned from Google’s altered logo, today is the 37th Earth Day. I suppose some kind of celebration is in order. Perhaps that is most true because of how notable today is not. Back in 1970, it might have been a politically important act to recognize the importance of the environment. Now, it seems daft to think otherwise. Of course, that doesn’t mean that heightened environmental awareness has always translated into good environmental policy. Our society is far from sustainable, but the business of changing that is probably not the spectacular fare of street demonstrations and activist announcements.
When it comes to fairly localized environmental problems – like particulate emissions – it does seem to be a matter of societies becoming rich enough that they can afford to prioritize that instead of more pressing matters like food or security. Japan’s re-development after the Second World War is probably the most clearcut example. The first Earth Day certainly had something to do with the progession towards investing more resources in conservation and environmental management in the United States: helping to spawn the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts. It seems reasonable to hope that a similar progression will occur in newly developed places in coming decades. Of course, that leaves the diffuse and difficult problems like climate change and fisheries management to be tackled multilaterally somehow. That may well require a progression in politics akin to what transpired 37 years ago.
Helvetica
With my first printed and bound work sitting on the desk beside me, I might be forgiven for having delved a bit into typography and printing. Most people will be familiar with Helvetica, one of the most commonly used sans serif fonts in history. Fewer will know as much about it as is provided by this article. Quoted therein is Eric Gill, the British sculptor who designed the font I ultimately chose for my thesis. More on Helvetica can be found on Metafilter.
Typefaces have an interesting effect on the presentation of data. Usually, the differences between them are subtle enough to evade perception. Nevertheless, the shape they give to individual words or whole pages of text immediately conveys a great deal of information about the source: in terms of elegance, audience, and approach.
Important OS X update
Mac users, make sure you get the latest security patch from Apple. It covers some distinct vulnerabilities in terms of wireless networking, as well as patching several dozen general system and application vulnerabilities. You can read more about it here.
To get it, just click the Apple icon in the upper-left corner of the screen and then choose ‘Software Update’ from the menu that comes down. While being on a Mac does make you safer, it certainly does not make you invulnerable.
Cataloging fiction
One of my favourite things about Wikipedia is how it includes masses of detail about fictional universes, as well as the particular one we seem to inhabit. Those wanting to learn about particular features of Herbert’s Dune universe, the Tolkien legendarium, or any of dozens of others have access to encyclopedic articles about them. Some people dismiss the effort of imagination that goes into such verisimilitude as a wasteful exercise. Far healthier, I think, is to see it in one of two ways. At a lesser level, such alternative universes can be a mechanism for criticizing important features of our own. The anti-mutant paranoia in the X-Men comics was a response to McCarthyism. At a higher level, they simply allow for the envisioning of the world as it might be. Especially for children, this is a valuable thing to encourage.
Being able to appreciate Miyazaki films is the bare minimum level of imagination that should be accepted from human beings. Being able to appreciate other such alternative realities is a characteristic that should be respected, rather than mocked.
and in the darkness bind them
My printing graph clearly applies to a great many circumstances. Having finished my thesis last night, I could not print it in Wadham because their printer was broken. I couldn’t print it in St. Antony’s because every scrap of paper had been used by other people scrambling to finish their own theses.
No problem, I thought, Temple Bookbinders says on their website that “photocopying service from disk or proof is also available.” As it turns out, the website is inaccurate in this regard. The nearest place that could print it was “around the corner,” by about a mile and a half. There, my thesis was printed at the rate of one page every 23 seconds (I timed it). For the 222 pages of black and white printing, they charged me £16 ($36 Canadian). The thesis will be bound and ready to be picked up at 11:00am tomorrow.
On the plus side, I did manage to see the Headington shark house.
[Update: 5:00pm] I have returned my thesis books to their various libraries of origin, re-filed the books I own into my normal non-fiction classification system, and put my box of thesis related articles out of sight.
Ironing out final wrinkles
Turns out it’s a good thing I printed off a draft thesis to scrutinize: a significant number of little typographical and grammatical errors were there to be found. Many of them, it seems, were actually introduced during the previous round of revision, especially in places where I was converting passive sentences into active ones. Somehow, I seem to have lost dozens of connector words like ‘the’ and ‘for.’ They are being systematically re-introduced.
Tomorrow morning, I am joining a convoy of fellow M.Phil in IR students cycling to Headington where – it is promised – there is a printer who can produce hardbound copies of our theses for less than £30 a copy, ready in time to be submitted on Monday. I wanted to have it done for tomorrow, but I found out today that having a copy prepared for tomorrow would be absurdly expensive: more than £50 a copy. Even £30 seems pretty steep. After all, we are talking about two pieces of cardboard, some plastic, and a few minutes of labour. I suppose the print shops here have a captive audience to exploit.
[Update: 1:00am] The thing is now in its final digital format. In eight hours, I am cycling over to Headington to have it printed and bound. I would print it myself, but I have no access to a printer that is (a) not broken and (b) stocked with paper.