Note: graphs are the purest and most compelling form of self-expression.
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.
presque à la fin
In a minute, I am heading to Wadham to print of a 110+ page draft version of my entire thesis: from title page to Appendix I (chemicals regulated in the Stockholm Convention). The major purpose of this is to identify any bits that are confusingly worded, incorrectly cited, badly formatted, etc. I am also trying to catch any notes to myself still embedded in the text. It would be embarrassing to discover something like “[EXPLAIN THIS BETTER!]” stuck in the middle of the copy filed for eternity in the Bodleian. This review should ensure that the version printed and bound tomorrow suffers only from any faults in my research and argumentation, not from minor annoyances that may annoy the assessors.
One thing I have discovered recently is that there is a better mechanism for dealing with those times when your brain feels like it has a sea urchin inside, or you are otherwise unable to write. Better than napping or brewing another pot of coffee is cycling ten miles or so: out to Yarnton to the north or through Marston to the east. This is something to bear in mind for when exams draw near.
[Update: 11:00pm] Only Murphy’s Law can explain it: I cycle over to Wadham to print off my draft thesis. It gets to page 56 and the only printer available for student use (HP Laserjet 4200n) suffers some kind of massive failure. All it shows on the screen is a double line of asterixes. The paper tray is somehow physically jammed so that it can only be pulled out about an inch before it encounters an unmovable blockage. Of course, there are no IT people around at this time of night and I don’t want to risk damaging such an expensive piece of equipment. Naturally, it charged me for printing the full 109 pages…
This thesis is carbon neutral
Thanks to a gift from my mother, I have been able to add the following to the opening section of my thesis:
This thesis, which generated about six tonnes of carbon dioxide from flights, paper production, printing, heating, and electricity usage has been carbon-neutralized through NativeEnergy. This was done by capturing methane from an American farm.
Six tonnes should cover my personal energy usage, as well as flights to and from Vancouver and emissions associated with printing the thesis. I have also included an estimate for my share of the power used by the server hosting this site. Methane is twenty-one times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2 and livestock agriculture produces about 18% of global emissions (discussed earlier).
The majority of NativeEnergy is owned by the The Intertribal Council On Utility Policy: a not-for-profit council of federally recognized Indian tribes in North and South Dakota, Nebraska and Iowa, with affiliates throughout the northern Great Plains. The gift is much appreciated.
While I realize that carbon offsets are not a viable mechanism to deal with the whole problem of climate change, they are a good way to make a statement about the issue, as well as avoid charges of hypocrisy when expending energy on climate research or advocacy. They have been discussed here before.
Reading material
Those who feel that they haven’t been getting their fix of geeky news from this blog recently (I have been too busy to investigate things unrelated to my official studies) may want to have a look at Cocktail Party Physics. Written by Jennifer Ouellette, it seems to include a pleasantly esoteric collection of disciplines and scientific discussions. Recent entries discuss satellites testing General Relativity, computing with bubbles, and the chemical properties of gemstones. The posts I have glanced at are well written, and have a nice personal touch to them.
I will be done the thesis, and back to my old self, by tomorrow night.
Mountain hat-trick
I may be spending the weekend of June 2nd hiking in the Lake District of England. Along with the Highlands of Scotland and Snowdonia in Wales, this one of the most significant mountainous areas in the British Isles. The only problem is that the Walking Club trip is uncomfortably close to my final exams, which will be between the 11th and 16th. Whether participating is possible or not will depend on how frantic things are looking closer to the date.
Photos from Scotland and Wales are linked on this page.
Magisterarbeitskampf
Somehow, no language can express the concept of ‘thesis struggle’ quite so well as German can: a fact that is evident even to those who don’t speak a word of it. If I could use twenty character compound words at will, the word limit would be less of a concern. As it stands, I am trying to figure out ways to reduce the number of words used up in footnotes. The incentives created by including them in the count are quite perverse: I am removing useful little bits of additional information, as well as reformatting citations into forms that will be more difficult for the examiners to deal with.
I look forward to being interesting again. That is to say, having the time and brainpower to write about anything other than the thesis.
PS. Looking for something new to read about? Try the island of Gukanjima, near Japan. Once a coal mining centre and the most densely populated urban space on earth in 1959, it is now totally abandoned. Have a look at this short documentary or this history, more detailed than the one in the Wikipedia entry.
Nearly at the end of the line
While distant forests shrieked at me from afar this afternoon, I printed off a copy of the most recent versions of my three substantive chapters and reviewed them in the Wadham Library. As much as I am used to spending ten hours of more watching words glow on an LCD display, editing only seems to reach its full potential when there are things to be crossed out, big arrows to be drawn, and incisive notes to be written with the margins.
Generally, I am quite happy with what is written. Things are not arranged or argued in quite the waythey would be if I started over now, but the major themes that arose from my research are reasonably well articulated. As has been the case for the past week, the biggest task remaining is the relocation of some bits of what has already been written and the filling in of some gaps.
I may even be able to attend the thesis-completion barbecue that some members of my program are holding on Friday evening.
Son et Lumière
Between the 26th and 30th of this month, I am going to be visiting a friend in Paris. For obvious reasons, I don’t have a great deal of time for research. Is there anything that people would recommend seeing on a trip of this length, aside from the obvious? I would love to go for longer but, as it is, I will be returning home with just a few days to churn out an international law paper.
Also, is there any general information about Paris that would be useful to know? EasyJet should be depositing me at Charles de Gaulle at 5:30pm on the 26th. I will be leaving from the same place at 10:35pm on the 30th.
Printing in 4-6 days
On Friday the 20th, I may head into London to get my thesis bound. The print shops there seem to be significantly faster and cheaper than those in Oxford. They are also likely to be somewhat less busy, given how significant a share of the Oxford graduate population seems to have materials to submit by noon on the 23rd. Whereas the print shop next to Wadham College needs two days and wants to charge almost £90 for two hard-bound copies, I have found a shop in London that will do so for £44 in two days, £64 in one day, and £84 in just five hours.
I am also not sure whether I should print the thesis myself or have the shop do it. Wadham charges 5p a page for printing. The print quality is pretty good, though the paper they provide is quite yellow and of poor quality. I could bring my own, but that would probably make the cost comparable to just having the print centre do it. One advantage of doing it myself would be the ability to better ensure that everything was printed properly and in the correct order.
In any case, by Thursday I should be completing my final tasks: getting the page numbers of each chapter to start at the right position, compiling the aggregated bibliography, filling in page numbers in the table of contents, and making sure all the citations are in place. I will probably print each chapter to PDF using Mac OS (thus embedding my chosen font) and then find a full copy of Acrobat somewhere, for use in stitching them together into one file. By tonight, I will be happy if I have filled in the gaps that remain in chapters three and four.
Microbiology on display
This is too cool not to link: The Inner Life of the Cell
This short video shows animations of some of the chemical processes that occur inside living cells. I only recognized a handful, but they are all beautiful and surreal. The focus is on the behaviour of lymphocytes in the presence of inflammation.
[Update: 13 December 2007] The links above had become outdated. As of today, they are repaired.