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.

Boots and letters

This morning, I got an impressive array of mail. I got postcards from Alex and Bryony (who are still off hiking), as well as from Tristan in New York. Meghan sent me a letter, and my mother sent me a package that can only be my hiking boots. With the second supervision I am teaching in an hour and a meeting with Dr. Hurrell shortly after, I haven’t the time to go through all this right now, but many thanks to all those who sent things.

I am glad to know that nothing now remains in the way of the Scotland trip. My unrelated trip to London tomorrow promises to extend my pattern of minimal sleep. This looks to be another 7:00am or earlier style departure. I should be back in time to catch the tail-end of Nora’s birthday barbecue.

Already July?

I hit a rich vein of thesis materials today: a thesis on a related topic that is a veritable gold mine of sources. So often am I likely to be making reference over the next year, I had the thing printed and it now resides in one of the curious two-ring binders that are the UKs equivalent of our three-ring sort. Once I finish it tomorrow morning, and perhaps print off a few of the key cited journal articles, I will be in better shape to discuss the thesis plan with Dr. Hurrell tomorrow afternoon.

Tomorrow will also bring the second tutorial that I am teaching for the St. Hugh’s summer school. I got the essay tonight, so it has become another element of the clutch of reading material that I need to get through in the next fifteen hours or so. Little time remains for Sweetness in the Belly – a novel my mother sent me – or “Barn Burning” – a short story that I told Linnea I would read months ago. I also picked up a used copy of Far From the Madding Crowd. For some reason, I absolutely love the sound of that title. Somehow, the sounds and syllables combine magically in a way that has nothing to do with its meaning, which has never been very clear to me anyhow.

For the rest of the summer, I’ve decided to feel guilty about not traveling whenever I am doing thesis work, guilty about not doing thesis work whenever I am not traveling, and absurdly guilty at times when I am doing neither. That way, I will hopefully manage to accomplish the two major goals of the summer in the time that remains before Michaelmas 2006 begins. To anyone who worries that such guilt will keep me from enjoying things in general, they need not be concerned.

PS. Life is full of unbloggable surprises (though I don’t have time to relate them at the moment, anyhow).

Product endorsement: Foosh mints

I feel the time has come to formally register my appreciation for Foosh Power Mints. The reasons for which I like them are numerous:

They don’t dance around the fact that they are caffeinated mints. There are no euphemisms (ie. guarana), and the dosage is clear and comprehensible – 100mg of caffeine per mint.
They actually taste quite good, particularly for a sugar free mint and especially for one so effectively saturated with stimulant.
They cost less than coffee, per unit wakefulness, and do not require boiling water. They can be had in the UK for 2 Pounds per pack of 12 mints.
They can be consumed quickly and easily, without pausing from what you are already doing: whether it be reading, trying to sort out a train timetable, debugging a PHP script, or scaling a frozen waterfall.
Unlike coffee – which tends to make me ravenously hungry – they do not substantially increase my food bill.
Along with caffeine and mint flavour, they also contain some unknown (probably negligible) amount of ginseng and – more usefully – taurine and B vitamins.

For those struggling to slog through reading material, or develop some basic level of awareness in the early morning (for work, travel, or other reasons), Foosh mints are worth a try.

Touristy Oxford summer

Summer Oxford Saturdays are utterly saturated by groups of visitors. Between Church Walk, Wadham, Sainsbury’s, and Church Walk I saw at least twenty such groups – many with matching backpacks, hats, or t-shirts. I suppose that is a mechanism to ensure that the various herds stay distinct, and don’t meld or dissolve during the course of their passage through historic Oxford.

The university must spin an enormous amount of money off the summer trade. Conferences, summer schools, concerts and all manner of means of drawing people here and extracting pounds and pence for the greater wealth and glory of the colleges. I know UBC does the same kind of thing, but I don’t think they will ever be able to manage quite the densities that exist here. That is befitting of an old and famous university located close to one of the world’s major metropolitan centres.

Annoying as it may sometimes be to have to push your way through massive crowds to buy groceries or use a library, it would be terrifically wasteful to leave all this capacity essentially idle over the summer. There are streets, beds, and classrooms to be filled – not to mention brain capacity on the part of scores and scores of tutors and grad students who are generally desperately trying to both complete and avoid their own research.

PS. Canadians would do well to read the special report on Afghanistan in this week’s Economist. With more than 2000 Canadians still serving there – either as part of Operation Enduring Freedom or NATO’s International Security Assistance Force – the situation there should be of considerable interest to us all.

Another Papa Fly Production

Fans of Mica’s videos may want to know that a new one is online. This one is filmed in the gym where I used to have judo practice: at the church approximately equidistant between my parents’ house and Nick’s. It stars the younger siblings of at least two of my friends: including my friend Jonathan’s younger brother Justin and Peter, the younger brother of my friend Ryan (who was also my former boss in the sound and lighting crew at my old high school).

The song is quite catchy. I wish I knew what the band was called.

Here is a direct link to Google Video, for those who don’t want to go via his blog.

iTunes data integrity question

I find that a small number of the songs that I have in iTunes have become mysteriously truncated: suddenly coming to an abrupt end somewhere between twenty seconds and two minutes before the song is over. These are songs that worked properly before. In total, less than one in thirty songs are affected, in my estimation. Even so, in a library of 3786 songs, that’s a non-trivial proportion. In particular, Bob Marley songs seem to be vulnerable for some reason. Of the small collection I have, more than half have been thus clipped over the course of the last few years. I don’t know if this is simply corruption due to entropic increase in my hard drive, or whether something more complex is at work.

Is this an issue anybody knows anything about? Google has not been forthcoming with information from other people similarly affected. The problem is especially annoying because it is difficult to remember exactly which songs have been affected, and thus to replace them. Also, most of the CDs from which my iTunes music was generated are back in boxes of mine in Vancouver.

PS. This is definitely not related to the option in iTunes to have songs end before the track normally does (useful for cutting applause off in live tracks, or removing annoying band chatter before and after songs).

Lecture in the Taylorian

The lecture today on Canada-US security and defence cooperation went well; it could even be a solid demonstration of the preferability of lecturing over research. I did talk overly quickly, burning through my forty-five minute presentation in just over half an hour, but the questions were good and I think I fielded them pretty well. The fear of going overtime can generate unwanted haste. I did manage to avoid a frequent error I’ve made in the past, namely that of getting lost in my own notes. It’s easier to avoid when you really know the material you’re covering, and the notes are for structure, rather than content.

A presentation on a topic like this is always a political act. On that basis, I think I struck the right note. I took the more truthful bits of the ‘staunch and eternal allies’ premise sometimes hammered upon by Canadian politicians under fire from the US and mixed it with some of the more essential elements of the ‘importance of legitimacy and international law’ scolding that with which we tend to fire back. All in all, I think it was reasonably balanced and candid. Wearing my NORAD pin – with Canadian and American flags on it – probably contributed positively to my ability to represent myself as someone who genuinely wants a friendly and constructive relationship between the two countries, and has considerable respect for both.

Lecturing itself was quite enjoyable, despite the associated anxiety. With a bit more practice and confidence, I think that I could get very good at this, indeed.

Reading, writing, walking

With all that is ongoing, it has been a busy day. That said, things now seem to be on track for tomorrow’s lecture. Monday, I will be teaching another seminar and meeting with Dr. Hurrell to discuss the lacklustre result of the research design essay. Tuesday, I am going to London to see the Kandinsky exhibition with Sarah Webster. This is especially welcome, as it will be the first time I’ve seen her since her wedding, back in March.

A postcard from Kelly arrived today. She will be returning from Scotland sometime in the next week, though things are uncertain given all the vagaries that attach themselves to what is simultaneously a research trip and a family holiday. Her safe return is much anticipated.

While retracing a portion of the bike ride I described here a few days ago on foot with Antonia this afternoon, I managed to take some photographs with which I am reasonably pleased . Once you have more than 4000 from a place as small as Oxford, it becomes hard to come up with something good every day. As such, I’ve used a few of them to adorn photos from past days that were lacking images. The general idea is that posts without specific topics (ie. this one) should include photographs at the rate of about one per day. This is to compensate for the fact that I am just summarizing things at you.

Privacy and power

Canada’s Privacy Commissioner has released an excellent report, highlighting some of the disturbing trends that he sees as ongoing. Rather than paraphrase, I will quote one of the best sections extensively:

It is my duty, in this Annual Report, to present a solemn and urgent warning to every Member of Parliament and Senator, and indeed to every Canadian:

The fundamental human right of privacy in Canada is under assault as never before. Unless the Government of Canada is quickly dissuaded from its present course by Parliamentary action and public insistence, we are on a path that may well lead to the permanent loss not only of privacy rights that we take for granted but also of important elements of freedom as we now know it.

We face this risk because of the implications, both individual and cumulative, of a series of initiatives that the Government has mounted or is actively moving toward. These initiatives are set against the backdrop of September 11, and anti-terrorism is their purported rationale. But the aspects that present the greatest threat to privacy either have nothing at all to do with anti-terrorism, or they present no credible promise of effectively enhancing security.

The Government is, quite simply, using September 11 as an excuse for new collections and uses of personal information about all of us Canadians that cannot be justified by the requirements of anti-terrorism and that, indeed, have no place in a free and democratic society.

I applaud both the Commissioner’s comments and his willingness to take such a firm and public stance. As I’ve said dozens of times now: terrorists are dangerous, but governments fundamentally much more so. They can cloak themselves in secrecy and are imbued with a level of power that permits them to do enormous harm, whether by accident or by design. Compared with the excesses and abuses committed by governments – Western democratic governments included – terrorism is a minor problem.

I recommend that all Canadians read the report in its entirety. I found the link via Bruce Schneier’s excellent security blog.

Present at the creation

The Globe and Mail – Canada’s big left-leaning national paper – has a surprisingly funny poll running today: “U.S. President George W. Bush turns 60 on Thursday and Prime Minister Harper will be in Washington to help him celebrate. What gift should the PM bring?”

Four fabulous British-made submarines [a reference to our submarine fleet: four diesel-powered subs better suited to re-fighting the Battle of the Atlantic than modern naval operations]
A belt buckle carved from softwood lumber [reference to a long running trade dispute where the US was ruled against both by NAFTA panels and the WTO, but refused to drop its illegal policy]
Don Cherry [colourful Canadian hockey commentator, infamous for wearing really bad suits]
Seal skin seat covers for Air Force One [those cute little harp seals are basically a license for Greenpeace to print money]
A copy of Stompin’ Tom’s Greatest Hits [not a musical personage I can ever recall hearing, but one of those things Easterners, or possibly an earlier generation, are likely to think of as very Canadian]
The Montreal Expos. Oh, wait….

My vote? I say go with the belt buckle. He will probably wear it while clearing brush. A running tally of the results is here.