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.

Data protection

After another serious failure of a computer used by a friend or family member, I feel obliged to remind people that Oxford provides excellent free comprehensive data backups. If you are basing your entire M.Phil or D.Phil project on files in a (theft-vulnerable and breakable) laptop, this is something you really must do.

I already wrote about it here.

As a special bonus – prompted by passing the 40,000 visitor mark on the blog – I will personally configure the Oxford backup system for the first graduate student friend of mine who leaves a comment requesting it. Call that a special bonus for people who are reading the blog in syndication.

[Update: 22 January 2007] Bad news for people with Intel-based Macs: the TSM backup client for Mac OS does not yet support them. Supposedly, a new one is being released in February. Until then, keep making backups to external hard disks or optical discs.

Further paternal Oxford exhibition

Today, my father and I visited the Natural History and Pitt Rivers Museums. I’ve been there many times before, but it is always good to introduce someone new. Those who have a passion for biology invariably find the thousands of specimens in the Natural History Museum fascinating; those less keen generally appreciate the architecture and a few ‘greatest hits.’ I also brought the mini tripod that I bought on eBay along with me. As such, I have much better photos of the low light areas than I had been able to take previously. Expect to see them cropping up on future days that have been too busy or unlucky to include any good photography.

The day also included a bit of wandering on Cowley Road and Evensong at Magdalen College. I appreciated the bit at the end when there was a prayer for “those who have no faith and thus have no hope,” though I felt a bit slighted by it as well. There are things aside from God in which to have faith, and there is plenty of reason to be hopeless, even if you believe in higher powers. The world is a complex thing, and it rarely accords with our ideals.

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Michaelmas concluded

Only one term of classes remains for me at Oxford, since Trinity begins with the submission of my thesis, ends with exams, and seems to involve little except revision in the interim. I am hoping to wrangle myself one of the locking offices in the Wadham Library, so that I can entomb myself with notes and books: emerging haggard and unshaven to write a series of stellar essays in the exam schools.

I am actually fairly excited about international law next term. There is a real analytical depth to law that I’ve always found quite personally interesting. It’s a bit like science or strategic studies: there are expert issues to be considered, complex internal forms of examination, and at least the possibility that a rigorous answer can be reached (according to internal protocols, if not some over-arching standard of assessment).

PS. Organizational difficulties have begun to manifest themselves, as regards the Turkey trip. This I anticipated, to an extent, but did not expect to arise so soon.

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Live-blogging Keohane

Anyone interested in reading about Robert Keohane’s presentation to the Global Economic Governance Seminar can do so on my wiki. There is still nearly an hour in the session, so if someone posts a clever question as a comment, I will try to ask it. I doubt anyone will do so in time, but it would be a neat demonstration of the emerging capabilities of internet technology in education.

Since this is a publicly held lecture, I don’t see any reason whatsoever for which the notes should not be available. Those who don’t know who Robert Keohane is may want to have a look at the Wikipedia entry on him.

[Update: 7:30pm] Robert Keohane’s second presentation, given at Nuffield on anti-Americanism, was well argued but not too far off the conventional wisdom. I am here taking “the conventional wisdom” to be that in a survey on Anti-Americanism that I am almost sure ran in The Economist during the last couple of years.

Basically: it does exist, more so in the Middle East than anywhere else. The Iraq war has exacerbated it almost everywhere, but the biggest turn for the worse has been in Europe. The policy impact of Anti-Americanism is not very clear. Finally, lots of what would be taken as a legitimate political stance if expressed by an American at home is taken as Anti-Americanism elsewhere.

Keohane distinguished four sorts of Anti-Americanism, three of which have been expressed on this blog. The first was the kind grounded in the belief that the United States is not living up to its own values: what he called Liberal Anti-Americanism. Guantanamo, and everything that word conjures up, gives you the idea. The second is social Anti-Americanism: for instance, objections to the death penalty of the absence of state funded health care. The third is Anti-Americanism based on fear of encroachment into the domestic jurisdiction of your state, what he called the state sovereignty variety. The last was radical Anti-Americanism, which I would suggest is distinguished more by the language used to express it, the degree to which the positions taken are extreme, and the kind of actions justified using it than by the kind of analysis that underscores the rational components thereof.

Party in London with other Canadians

I won’t be able to attend tonight’s party at the High Commissioner’s official residence in London, but other Canadian grad students with the time and inclination should. High Commissioner is a title invented by Canadians to stress how our relationship with Queen and Empire could not be captured through a mere exchange of ambassadors. Partly as a result of the former prominence of that relationship, the High Commissioner has a very nice house and throws fine (if short) parties:

Event details:

Friday, December 1 from 18:30 to 20:30
James R. Wright, High Commissioner for Canada’s residence – 3 Grosvenor Square, London W1 (Bond Street Underground).
Google Map

Last year, just showing up was enough to get in, but you may want to contact Ian Napier (ian.napier@international.gc.ca) to double check, if you are planning to come from far off.

Wraithlike in Oxford black

In an hour, my father and I are attending the high table dinner in Wadham. This has been my first occasion to wear the Scholar’s Gown that Alex and Bryony gave me – and which I am entitled to wear instead of the normal graduate student gown because of being a Wadham College Senior Scholar. Between the longer and fuller bottom section and the broad sleeves, I felt distinctly wraith-like, walking around on this chilly night at the end of November. I will readily admit that wearing sub fusc is rather better when you feel ghoulish as a result than when you merely feel self-conscious.

Either tomorrow or Saturday, my father and I will head off to London, on our way to Istanbul. Hopefully, we will have the chance to see Sarah W, while we are there.

[Update: 10:00pm] Sorry to have not been writing more interesting things lately. I have been utterly sapped of energy for days now, partly on account of a still wildly erratic sleep pattern. The last time I can recall feeling genuinely energetic and sharp in thinking was back on the 21st or 22nd. Hopefully, that will change before I get to Istanbul.

Many thanks to Robert Shilliam, my college advisor, with helping so much in the arrangement of the high table dinner for my father and I tonight.

The coming break

Mentally glancing over the tasks I have set for myself over the winter break, I am a bit daunted:

See Turkey (4-16 December)
Complete and submit papers for developing world seminar
Complete a very considerable amount of thesis reading
Write a draft of the first three thesis chapters: Introduction, Literature Review, and Background to Case Studies
Substantially advance the process of finding a job for next year
Complete tasks that have been in my “important but not urgent” pile for weeks of months – for example, reading some papers people have sent and reconfiguring part of the OUSSG webpage
Find something to do for Christmas?

That said, there are six entire weeks to work with. If I can cajole my brain into a productive mode and keep it there (through the application of coffee and tasty stir-fries), the above list should be manageable.

Going into the next term with half the thesis written will certainly reduce the depth to which I descend into madness as that April 22nd deadline approaches.

New interface for comedic news

Comedy Central has rolled out a new interface for showing Daily Show and Colbert Report clips. The player seems to be rather more stable than the previous version, with no errors discernible in Firefox 2.0 and Mac OS X. The videos themselves are a bit bigger and seem to load faster. Perhaps the biggest improvement is that clip videos now play in sequence, in the order in which the bits were included in the actual episode.

The two biggest new problems are that the window in which the videos now play is very large and cluttered, and that video advertisements are now shown before the first clip you watch and sometimes in between them. For me, this is an acceptable price to pay for an improved viewing experience. It was very annoying to have to go through them one by one before, especially given how about one in three would encounter an error that prevented it from loading.

It would be better to just have it all on YouTube, but I can understand that Comedy Central needs to extract advertising dollars from we web-viewers. Of course, I won’t be de-activating my AdBlock extension or the Filterset G updater for it anytime soon. After a few weeks of using it, the web seems truly garish when viewed in a normal web browser. You need never be troubled by annoying banners again. Flashblock is also a godsend, since almost all the flash on the web is either advertising or potentially malicious.

Touring south Oxford

Most of today was spent giving my father a fairly comprehensive tour of Oxford: south of Wadham College. Starting at Wadham, we went up Hollywell Street to New College where we saw the walls, mound, and cloisters. Then we carried on to Manor Road and the Department of Politics and International Relations. Down Longwall Street, we came to the High Street and headed up to Carfax. On the way, we ducked into Queen’s College, University College, and All Souls. We also picked up the Scholar’s Gown that Alex and Bryony so thoughtfully gave me for my birthday.

On the way to lunch at the Vault and Gardens, we had the good fortune to run into Claire, Emily, Iason, Alex, and Bryony. It would have been hard to arrange so fortuitous an encounter. From there, we took a bit of a detour to see Nuffield College and the Oxford Castle. After a lunch involving excellent marinated tofu (I asked the staff how it was prepared), we went up St. Aldates Street, past Christ Church, to the Folly Bridge. Before reaching the bridge, we ducked into the magistrates court, at my father’s request, and watched a few minutes of a trial.

We then walked along the Isis to see the Greylag Geese. I have never seen the river so swollen with rainwater. The bank is almost completely submerged and the River Cherwell (normally a tranquil spot for punting) had an aggressive rate of flow. Walking along it, near Magdalen College, I saw that a number of sports fields have been flooded.

After heading back up the High Street to Carfax, we got some coffee and then went to have a look at Blackwell’s. All told, we were walking for about five and a half hours. I am now left with the time between now and dinner (with Claire and my father) to work on readings for tomorrow’s seminar. Even when you are very tired, it can be rather satisfying and fun to just crash along.

Fraud via disappearing ink

A particularly cunning sort of fraud is occurring in the UK right now: someone comes to your door and convinces you to donate to worthy charity X. You agree, and bring out your chequebook. The fraudster hands you their pen, to fill out the cheque. The ink of of a vanishing sort and, after the transaction, the fraudster traces your signature from the groove in the paper, (generally) re-writes the original amount for the cheque, then puts their own name as the payee. Since most people only check amounts (and banks check nothing at all, unless the customer asserts that fraud has taken place) the fraudster makes off with however many charitable donations.

My personal inclination is to see this as one more among many reasons why cheques are no longer a decent form of payment.