Milan – Page 95 – a sibilant intake of breath

Familial introductions, crime, and bias in blogging

This morning, I had a walk and a cup of coffee with Margaret. After so much telephonic interaction, it was good to see her in person. I also received a very kind birthday card and gift from my family back in Canada. I’ve been affixing the various cards I receive to the non-painted surfaces in my room and they do much to give the place a bit of character.

For those who don’t know, my parents and youngest brother live in North Vancouver, in the house near Edgemont Village where I lived between second and twelfth grade. My mother’s name is Alena and, in addition to teaching English as a second language, she does a lot of volunteer work. Because of the demographics in North Vancouver, she teaches a lot of Iranians. With luck (and a visa that is still being awaited) she will be visiting Teheran in the spring of next year to see friends and former students. Aside from teaching, my mother is a very active reader and the source of the great body of excellent novels that fill the shelves of the house. My father, Oleh, is a lawyer at the firm Miller Thomson – where I have also worked, upon occasion. By far the most physically active member of my family, he plays squash, cycles a great deal, hikes, runs, and is a source of enthusiasm behind familial wilderness adventures: including the Powell Forest Canoe Circuit trip and the first and second Bowron Lakes adventures. One of his more notable adventures recently was working as an electoral monitor in Ukraine during the Orange Revolution.

My brother Sasha, still in high school, lives with my parents. He is on both the junior and senior improv teams at my old high school. Improv is actually an activity he inherited from my middle brother Mica, who is now at UBC. Several times, Mica went to the national championships in improvisational comedy: once on the same team as my friends Hilary and Alison. In his last year of high school, Mica’s team won the national tournament. Last year, the team that Sasha captained won the provincial championship. A player of baseball and soccer, Sasha is also a fanatical devotee of World of Warcraft: within which he runs a business exchanging characters and gold for real money. Of the three brothers, he seems to be the one with the most entrepreneurial aptitude.

Mica is definitely the foremost dramatist of the trio: with starring roles in several of the major shows put on by my high school, as well as the production of Damn Yankees at UBC last year. He is also probably the most athletic of the three of us. While I did not persist long in sunny baseball afternoons and rainy soccer mornings, Mica had quite a bit of dedication – especially as a pitcher. He now seems to pour a lot of his energy into making videos, many of which are quite excellent. Studying history, he was in the Arts One program last year, and intends to do his teaching certificate once he finishes his undergraduate degree.

One of the most difficult aspects of spending two years in England will be either not seeing or barely seeing my brothers over that course of time. While I do keep in touch with them over MSN and through things like the blog, it’s certain that the next two years will bring some huge changes for both of them. While I am sure they will both do very well – they have talents which I lack and envy, as well as the sense of humour which is so critical to maintaining sanity – it will be unfortunate to see it from such a distance. I hope very much that they will visit me here. The last photo in this collection shows my brothers and I at my departure party.

One thing that people find confusing is that only Sasha, my father, and I have the same last name. When my parents wed, my mother kept her last name. Furthermore, they agreed to alternate the family names of children, beginning with my mother’s in the case of a female child and my father’s in the case of a male child. It strikes me as a fair and sensible way to go about it.

I got one piece of distressing news over Skype from my mother today. Apparently, Sasha and his friend Jonah got mugged by four 2″x4″ wielding thugs on their way home from improv practice a couple of days ago. Sasha knew one of the assailants from school. They were after money and iPods and, despite Sasha’s efforts to talk them out of it, they persisted in making threats of violence. Luckily, Sasha and his friend were able to run away and gain sanctuary in a stranger’s house. Apparently, the police are unwilling to press any charges, despite the fact that they caught all four of the would-be thieves, because nobody was hurt. To me, that seems extremely irresponsible and an encouragement to such thuggishness. They did, however, commend Sasha for his handling of the situation.

I was unsuccessfully mugged twice in North Vancouver while in high school: once with Jonathan on Highland road by a couple of snowboarders and once in Edgemont Village with Chevar by one of my classmates. The second time was at knifepoint, right in the middle of a sunny afternoon. In neither case did I have any money on me, as I am in the habit of almost never doing so. The fact that the police have never managed to do much of anything when any member of my family has been robbed or burgled does not create great confidence. I am extremely glad, in any case, that nothing too bad befell Sasha or his friend. Hopefully, the four thieves will find cause to devote their energies to something more productive and socially acceptable, even if the authorities are unwilling to compel it.

One last item. You hear bandied about a lot of talk about liberal bloggers, conservative bloggers, and bias overall on the internet. To me, such labeling risks being counterproductive. Just because you can categorize someone in one way or another doesn’t let you anticipate or automatically ignore their ideas. It’s absurd to think the complex political and ethical questions of the day can be answered along a single axis of difference. It’s equally absurd to think that a polarized community willing to completely ignore the arguments and positions of others will lead to the advancement in knowledge, thinking, or ethics. Open, civil debate must be the approach taken.

Not particularly notable day (and dietary justifications)

Just a short post today: not very much happened and there is a great deal of work to be done on the two essays if I am to have them finished before Nick gets here.

We all got woken up brutally early this morning by a Wadham College fire drill and mandatory evacuation. Every room in library court has a dedicated alarm for wailing you out of bed, with the promise of college enforcers coming up afterwards to ensure that you have vacated. Down in the back quad, we huddled in circles in the cold and the yellow morning light, breath visible, grumbling about the timing of the test.

So here’s the (ambitious) plan for the next few days:

Finish a draft of the paper on the Chinese Civil War (tomorrow).
Finish a draft of the (unstarted) paper on American isolationism in the interwar period, based on the reading for my presentation and journal articles (Saturday).
Edit both papers myself (Sunday morning).
Meet with Bryony to swap and look over respective papers (Sunday evening).
Conduct final, final revisions on both (Monday)
Submit China paper to Andrew Hurell via inter-college mail (Tuesday).
Submit American foreign policy paper in class (Tuesday).

In the evening, I took part in a brief foray to the King’s Arms with Ben, Andy, Abra, and some of the other members of library court. The place was quite thoroughly packed – standing room only – but also pleasantly devoid of smoke. It was good to have a bit of social contact with my neighbours: a thing that has largely been absent since 0th week. (Pronounced ‘noughth.’)

After the expedition, I wrote a few emails (to Astrid, Sarah, and Margaret), uploaded a few photos to my Facebook account, and got back to reading about China. I think the way to tackle this essay is to discuss two periods. First, the one between the start of fighting in China between the Japanese and the Chinese communists and nationalists and the outbreak of the broader war in Asia. Second, the period that began after the dropping of the atomic bombs and the Japanese surrender. In each period, there was clearly a lot of foreign influence. I plan to argue that, while the communist takeover would have been impossible without certain things that outside powers did (particularly the Japanese weakening the Kuomintang), the ideology and policy of the communists was not defined by outside actors. It certainly wasn’t the offshoot of Russian communism that Americans sometimes saw it as being, though the Soviet withdrawal from parts of northern China was definitely conducted in a way that aided the CCP, at the expense of the KMT.

Tomorrow morning, I am meeting Margaret for a brief walk before the statistics lab. After so many instances of talking with her at length on the phone, despite the five minute walk between our respective domiciles, it will be nice to communicate face to face.

In response to Sarah’s blog post tonight, I realized that the justification for my slightly unusual diet it buried in the offline pages of the old blog. The first part of my policy is to not eat meat that has been factory farmed. Basically, there are three reasons for it. The first is because factory farming is environmentally unsustainable. The second is the way in which it is conducted is hygienically repulsive: feeding animals ground up bits of members of their own species is seriously dodgy. The same goes for lacing them with hormones and antibiotics. The third reason is that I think even chickens, cows, and pigs are morally considerable enough that the animals should not be made to live in such horrific conditions. They are far more badly treated than animals that are having medical research conducted upon them, as detailed in this leader from The Economist. As it explains: “The couple of million (mainly rats and mice) that die in Britain’s laboratories are far better looked-after and far more humanely killed than the billion or so (mainly chickens) on Britain’s farms.”

I also try to avoid eating fish that are farmed (for most of the same reasons) and those caught in an unsustainable fashion. People seem to believe that fish farming is a sustainable option. Really, they are just catching less tasty fish, grinding them up and feeding them – along with plenty of antibiotics and hormones – to salmon or something else that is tasty. Given that the less savoury fish – like blue whiting or orange roughy- are being fished in a grossly unsustainable way, fish farming is really no better than gill-netting. Worse, in many senses, since it pollutes the sea with hormones and other chemicals.

PS. Due to the wrecking efforts of a particular individual in Lancaster, I’ve had to turn on comment moderation. Anything inoffensive will be approved. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Feeling like part of an Oxford community

This morning, I went for coffee and a walk with Bryony Lau: one of my fellow Canadians in the M.Phil program. She is a well-travelled and interesting person, who seems to be handling the program extremely well. I am glad that she will be coming to the dinner and film at St. Antony’s tonight, to which Alex has invited several of us. Like Claire, Bryony is taking a course at the Oxford University Language Centre: an idea that I should probably emulate. I can almost feel my command of French seeping away.

In the early afternoon, I met with my college advisor – Dr. Paul Martin – for the first time. We spoke about scholarships to apply for, the structure of the university, and the M.Phil program. As he explained it, college advisors don’t really do anything, aside from answer general questions by email and take you to dinner at high table twice a year. Dr. Martin also said that I should be reading eleven or twelve books a week, which I think is mad. Either I would have no comprehension of them whatsoever, or I would have time to do absolutely nothing else. That kind of personal abuse really doesn’t seem like education to me. That said, I definitely don’t feel as though I have been reading enough. It’s quite a difficult thing for me to buckle down and do, unless there is no more interesting alternative or the situation has become absolutely urgent. Perhaps I am not well suited to academic life.

Today brought two excellent pieces of mail. The first was the NatWest credit card which I applied for in September. My days of pondering the Mastercard Pound-Dollar exchange rate when buying groceries have ended. Better still, I got a birthday card and gift from my maternal grandmother, aunt, uncle, and cousins in North Carolina. I shall write them a letter of thanks. My Uncle George and Aunt Eva are the parents of my cousin Jiri in Prague, as well as his sister Kristyna. It seems that Sasha and my mother will be going to visit them around Christmas time.

In the evening, I took a stab at Vancouver emulation. I sat in Starbucks, listening to Melissa Ferrick, and read The Economist and the Spence China book. Never mind that when you order a Venti dark roast here you get a blank stare followed by a query to the manager about what a dark roast is. Differing voltages, differing nomenclature. Despite minor cultural friction, it was an excellent way to escape the cold, induce wakefulness, read, and avoid libraries all at the same time. For those who haven’t heard her, Melissa Ferrick is an energetic and engaging Canadian singer. For me, her musical talent is somehow well demonstrated in the precise timing of the pause between the words “You are” and “walking grace” in the live version of the song “Will You Be the One.” I think it’s the constant theme of seeking love in her music that so endears it to me. Another fine musical introduction from Astrid.

The later part of tonight was extremely nice. Having dinner at St. Antony’s with Alex, Bryony, Shohei, and Iason, I felt like I was finally part of a community, not just friends with a few people in Oxford. It’s a powerful thing, to finally feel connected in a place.

After dinner, Bryony, Shohei, and Iason had to go off to work on various projects. Alex and I, however, went to see Buongiorno Notte with the St. Antony’s European Film Society. It’s a difficult film to write about, really. Most anything you would care to say about it is said better by the film itself: a complex and beautiful story about the power of human choice.

I should get back to the eternal task of reading – one that I don’t feel that I do enough of or sufficiently well at. My thanks again to Alex for the invitation.

Night of 1000 Dinners: Sunday, December 4th

I encourage those in Vancouver, whether at UBC or not, to participate in this excellent event at the Westin Bayshore Hotel in Coal Harbour, which raises money to combat the global problem of land mines. All proceeds from the evening go to Adopt-a-Minefield, which funds mine clearance and victim assistance programs. I attended all the ones that were held while I was at UBC and enjoyed each thoroughly. Tickets are $20 for students and $40 for non-students: on sale by my friend Fernando and others. If this year is the same as previous ones, the United States Consulate General in Vancouver will provide free wine.

Statistics ER: A play in one act

Dramatis Personae:

Dr. Von Spatz: Haggard and unshaven, Dr. Spatz carries a clipboard and coffee cup. Bleary eyed, he has the tendency to rave very slightly at times.

Nurse Wilhelm: Beautiful, but shrill, Nurse Wilhelm wears a freshly pressed, very white nurse’s uniform and fiddles with various medical instruments and sensors.

Intern

Patient: Convulsing and comatose, in alternating fashion.

NURSE WILHELM, clearly in a state of considerable agitation, stands beside a gurney in the crowded ER, frantically looking at a chart, then at the clock, and back to the chart again.

Through the double doors, SPATZ enters, cup of coffee in hand.

WILHELM: Thank God you’re here, doctor! He’s been heteroskedastic for the last twenty minutes!

SPATZ: (wearily) What’s your confidence level, nurse? Don’t think that your frantic and increasingly standard deviations from close medical practice are going unnoticed.

WILHELM: The p-value is .08 and rising, doctor! He’s regressing!

SPATZ: (more alarmed) Multivariate? Have you checked the concavity?

WILHELM: His r-squared has been falling ever since we took the log of the dependent variable.

SPATZ: Adjusted r-squared?

WILHELM: Also falling! Now at 0.13!

SPATZ: (whistles softly) Houston, we have an endogeneity problem.

WILHELM: Shall I induce multicollinearity, doctor? The data are increasingly dyadic.

SPATZ: Nurse, drop the outliers and set his IQR to red. STATA!

WILHELM: It’s no good, doctor, I can’t reject the null hypothesis! His t-test scores are neither unimodal nor symmetric.

INTERN enters and begins watching with a shocked expression. Noticing him, SPATZ turns to address him.

SPATZ: There’s not much we can do when we get them in this late, I’m afraid. It’s a standard error of people to wait until the variance is far too large, before bringing it to our attention.

Looks down into his coffee cup.

SPATZ: Some nights, it breaks my heart. Makes me think life’s nothing more than one big scatter plot for us to try and put a best-fit line through. Every time you think you’ve minimized the square of the residuals, some new outlier crops up to throw the whole thing off again. Sometimes… I wonder why I even bother.

INTERN: Because you’re a doctor, dammit, Spatz! Or have you forgotten your own causation? I remember when you used to run DFBETA tests all the time; now, you just throw away the outliers like yesterday’s newspaper.

SPATZ: Maybe you’re right… Maybe you’re right… Nurse, I am straightening up my game. Our relationship has been spurious all along, it’s only your close correlation with Nurse Whimpleton that has made it seem significant.

WILHELM: (gasps)

SPATZ: As for this poor fellow, make sure to check the interaction terms earlier next time.

The marvels of electricity, statistics, and the intricacies of the M.Phil

General musings:

I really like the image of emails, web pages, instant messages, and all the rest racing through fiber optic cables laid on the floors of various oceans. It seems more than faintly incredible to me that it should be possible at all, much less possible with such awesome rapidity. When talking about such things, there is always the danger of becoming the person – a hundred years or so ago – who we now mock for saying that nothing would every move faster than a steam locomotive. At the same time, I think awe about such things is legitimate. Our modeling of the world – the way we grow to perceive and understand it – is based upon all kinds of familiar parameters with regards to how things behave. Millions of little bits of paper don’t get sorted into neat arrays faster than you can begin to explain how to do it; things don’t zip from Oxford to Vancouver in less than the time it takes to write a comma or take a breath. And yet just these sorts of things happen all the time, generally uncommented upon, and form the basis of an increasingly large part of what many of us do.

Of course, the fact that we don’t comment on it is a reflection of how we now expect devices to perform in these ways – they have been integrated into our models of how the world functions. At the same time, I think there is utility and validity at marveling at the how of it all. The fact that I can generally catch objects thrown in my direction at a reasonable speed involves incredible feats of computation and muscular coordination. The fact that it is routine shouldn’t invalidate the wonder that consideration thereof can inspire. It also makes me hopeful that some more of the limitations that seem so intuitively obvious and insurmountable can be likewise addressed. Creating firm foundations for a truly sustainable economy, capable of providing everyone with a reasonable level of prosperity, would be one such accomplishment. This is something that I hope we will live to see at least the firm beginnings of.

In the much longer term, overcoming the barriers involved in interstellar travel and communication also comes to mind. It’s embarrassing to even bring up, since it exists enormously beyond the frontier of foreseeable technology, but it seems to me that if we don’t manage to obliterate ourselves in one way or another, the only way onwards is outwards and, if it’s to mean much of anything, we will need to be able to stay in touch with the people who do it.

The M.Phil:Today’s core seminar passed fairly well, though it was less useful for my China paper than I had hoped it would be. That said, I am fairly sure it will come together readily enough. It’s absurdly obvious that foreign influences played a key role in the Chinese Civil War. It’s just a matter of naming a bunch, discussing them a little, and then pointing out that there were important domestic factors as well, for instance the particular characteristics of Mao as a leader.

I am more anxious about the paper which I’ve opted to write for the core seminar, on how the interwar years impacted the war aims of the Big Three. It strikes me now as quite a dangerous question: very broad and prone to involving a few sloppy definitions and never getting anywhere. Since I have done very little reading on the topic so far, I could switch to something else in the interwar years, such as the “Was the USA isolationist in the inter-war years? What were the main domestic influences on US foreign policy-making?” question which I gave a presentation upon. Bureaucratic and interest politics have always struck me as a useful way of looking at how states reach their foreign policy positions. Also, since it is a topic that both seminars have moved past, I should have little competition for books. Well worth considering, then.

Caution: Statistics ahead

This evening, I spent about four and a half hours doing this week’s statistics assignment. For anyone still working on it, you should note that for the final question – the hypothesis test – there are only actually three cases of states that match the two criteria being evaluated. Among those three, the data for war deaths is missing from one: leaving you with only two observations to base your regression or hypothesis test upon. As such, whatever conclusions you seem to be able to draw from it (either through a t-test or regression) are quite meaningless. For some reason, the t-test function in STATA will give you a very low p-value, even though it is only using two data points and the confidence interval is between negative 36 million and positive 41 million. Do not be fooled! The assignment is also wrong where it says that: “No civilian government has a military executive.” According to the dummy variable they have you define, regimetype3, there are two cases where exec4=1 and regimetype3=0. Just take a look at the conditional distributions.

The question asking us to evaluate a claim based on two observations is particularly irksome. Since STATA will give people an answer, albeit a meaningless one, and since we are being trained to treat STATA as a magical black box that provides answers never to be checked against common sense, I am betting at least a few people will reject the null hypothesis at the 95% confidence level, just because the p-value is inexplicably small.

That is all

It’s exciting to think that once I finish this next paper for Dr. Hurrell, the next paper for the core seminar, and one more stats assignment, the vast majority of the actual work for this term will be complete. I look forward to using the inter-term break to:

Revise the fish paper (PDF) for another shot at publication. (But where?)
Go back and read some of the things from this term that were interesting, but which I did not have time for.
Go ahead and read some of the materials for next term. I am hoping that a reading list for the core seminar, as well as advice on which books are best for each topic, will be published.
Actually get some physical exercise of one kind of another.
Do some real cooking.
Finish reading Paradise Lost to myself.
Shoot a few rolls of real film in Oxford.
See a play.
Many others, to be added later…

Anyhow, I should stop listing things and do some reading from the China books that I need to return to the SSL tomorrow. I hope everyone in Oxford is dealing well with the cold and with the minor cascade of work the end of term is bringing. I hope those in Vancouver aren’t getting too bogged down by all the rain and are finding opportunities to enjoy all the things I miss about that fine city. To those elsewhere, I offer my generalized goodwill and encouragement that you provide me with more specific information, upon the basis of which more directed good wishes can be formulated.

PS. In our stats lecture today, we learned the most fearsome word ever: heteroskedasticity. It refers to the possibility that, as the value of some independent variable changes (ie. you look at older or younger people) not only the mean of some dependent variable (like height) might change, but also the tightness with which observations are located around that mean. I’d give you a better definition from the OED, but this fearsome word is not included.

Determinedly academic day

With Nick S. visiting the U.K. between the 21st and 25th, and with the clear memory of the insanity involved in writing two essays simultaneously and on short notice, I am making an effort to forge ahead with the papers due on the 22nd. At the SSL today, I read the relevant bits from Arif Dirlik’s The Origins of Chinese Communism: deciding that the period about which it is written it too early for my argument. I also read about half of Odd Westad’s Cold War and Revolution and carried on with the Spence book. Along with the stats assignment, I should finish both books tomorrow evening or Wednesday morning. Then, I can begin reading in earnest for the ‘Big Three’s war aims as influenced by the interwar period’ essay, for Dr. Wright and Dr. Fawcett.

Aside: The Roche Lecture:
This evening, I attended the New College Alec Roche Lecture in Public International Law, delivered by Ian Brownlie, CBE, QC. Judging by how many emails we all received about it, he must be quite an important guy. While I don’t mean to comment on it at length, there are a few points that it seems worthwhile to make. To me, the lecture involved a very large amount of what might be termed legal tut-tutting: pointing out inadequacies in the way international law had been portrayed and ignored in the last decade or so, though not demonstrating any kind of pragmatism with regards to the relationship between law and other factors in international affairs. Obviously, important legal questions arise as the result of actions such as those carried out by the coalitions in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. In particular, the legal grounds for the Iraq invasion are very shaky. Even so, a bit more subtlety and flexibility would have been welcome.

To me, it seems that there is an importance in recognizing that international law can shift and that, in the post-Rwanda era, interventions of the type launched in Kosovo may sometimes be necessary. International law relating to the scope of self defence, as well as the acceptability of interventions on humanitarian grounds, is definitely an area that is alive and evolving. Whether the action to expel the Serbian Army from Kosovo was indeed motivated by humanitarian factors or not, a more nuanced consideration of it must be made – rather than a total affirmation of unacceptability. Likewise, the connections between the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and Al Qaeda raise the serious possibility that the United States and its allies were justified in employing military force against them.

To me, it also seems important to recognize that, while principles are doubtless very important, it is to a large extent the practice of states that establishes international law. The practice of states tells a different story from that delivered, quite bitterly at times, by Mr. Brownlie. There has been a greater recognition, in the Security Council and elsewhere, that some kinds of actions not envisioned or clearly described in the original Charter are now to be part of the structure of world politics. A lecture that had done more to play out the ramifications of that, legal and otherwise, would have been rather more compelling.

Contrasting arguments are always welcome.

On an exciting but completely separate note: at 12:45 today, I became a fully paid member of Wadham College. One sixth of my total Oxford academic fees have made their way from various places in Canada, through the alleyways of the international financial system, across Oxford (as a tightly clutched bank draft), and into the deep coffers of this 395 year-old building. After five weeks of working at it – and $150 in banking fees – the deed is done. I can look forward now to when I get credited back for all those uneaten Wadham dinners.

In other news, Sarah Pemberton, with whom I shall be going to Tallinn in a month’s time, has joined the blogosphere with a cooking related weblog. Cooking is one of those skills that I know I really ought to develop and keep thinking that I will be forced to. Somehow, though, it never quite comes about. My favourite cooking experiences are definitely preparing huge vats of curry with Tristan, Christina, and Meghan – although it was also good fun to make macaroni and cheese on my little MSR SimmerLite stove in the middle of Fairview Crescent during a blackout one winter.

For those who appreciate all things culinary, the Chocolate & Zucchini weblog is well worth a look.

Rambling, eclectic reflections

Today, I did quite a lot of reading, sorted new music, and – in listening to older music – had my love for Tori Amos re-emphasized. If there is a greater musician alive, I haven’t heard them. The raw, impossibly emotive content of Tori Amos songs is enough to induce an adoration that quite transcends the rational. It’s little surprise that her live shows are a kind of super-sensory dream; something I described three years ago as watching a “semi-divine creature pound… her piano keys into us.” I really must acquire her Beekeeper album.

I remember first listening to Tori on the CD that Jenny made for me, back in high school: when Napster was young and my musical experience was confined to the boundaries of Edgefest concerts. One night, about seven years ago, I remember riding the bus to Victoria and missing one sailing of the ferry. During that two hour wait, I recall reading the issue of The Economist about Ariel Sharon’s election and listening to the overpowering live version of “Precious Things.” I remember the particular amber hue of the reading lamps on those Pacific Coach Lines buses, the lingering smell of cigarette smoke, presumably from when such activities were permitted onboard. I remember listening to “Silent all these Years” and “Crucify” while walking through rainy London streets, five years ago. I remember the way the brick wall across from the room where I was staying began to streak, as the afternoon rain ran down it, and how my collection of miscellaneous pamphlets on London attractions grew and reproduced in all the corners of the small room.

Oxford is getting cold. Sweaters, those awkward scratchy things I would never wear in Vancouver, are emerging from bottom drawers and into the normal rotation of worn clothing. I suppose having one wall composed entirely of windows (looking into the panopticon), and only an odd, gurgling radiator for heating contributes to these matters. Walking to the SSL at five-thirty tonight, clad in jacket, down vest, and gloves, there was a chilling sharpness reminiscent of cross country skiing, though without the warmth that comes with that activity’s exertion. Darkness before 6:00pm is normal enough, but real cold at such a time is novel. I shall consider it training for Tallinn. In the end, I far prefer cold to excessive heat – it is much more easily remedied. Exothermic bodies can be insulated and energized much more easily than their thermal capacity can be dissipated. Something similar explains my over-riding preference for shade over sunlight.

As I have meant to explain before, one of the things I like most about the M.Phil in International Relations program is how cooperative it is. There is a real sense that it is the 28 of us against the program, working together in a way that is both unfamiliar and quite valuable. Part of that may derive from how, aside from the sometimes quite arbitrary-seeming marking of the statistics assignments, we are not being numerically assessed on anything. That helps create a culture where notes and ideas are shared, essays are mutually read, and discussions serve to advance everybody’s understanding. It’s obvious that all of us will end up in circumstances where collaboration is essential, so it only makes sense to begin now.

At various times in the past few days, I’ve wandered through the random blogs provided by the ‘Next Blog‘ function on the Blogger toolbar. This was prompted partly by the fact that so many people seem to find my blog by this route. Also, I wanted to get a better sense of the overall content of this ‘blogosphere’ that some media outlets seem to champion, while others deride. Having now wandered through a lot of random sites, I am falling in more closely with those who are critical. Not to hold myself up as a paragon of fairness, but there are a lot of blatantly partisan or incorrect blogs out there. When one sticks to the clusters of one’s friends (of the skillful bunch that are the Oxford bloggers) one doesn’t realize how much vitriol and misinformation can be found out there. These blogs may not reach the level of crazy achieved by the masterful Time Cube¹ but, well, caveat lector.

PS. I’ve been listening to a lot of The Smiths today, since I gained access to it over shared iTunes folders on the Wadham network. While it ranges between reasonably good and quite good, it is all very similar. It goes better when interspersed with something a bit more energetic.

[1] Quite possibly the high water mark of internet-crazy, which is saying rather a lot. This site is definitely worth a look if you haven’t yet seen it. Feel free, also, to nominate challengers for the title of most insane, strange, or paranoid website via comments.

An uneventful day

On November 12th of last year, I was in the snow-swept complex of the West Point Military Academy, along with Samantha Hinds and Vicki Lyus, for the 56th Annual Student Conference on United States Affairs. It was our last night there and I remember walking back through the frigid air from the Firstie Club to the barracks were we were all staying. By comparison, very little happened in Oxford today, aside from reading and a few enjoyable periods of drinking tea and lounging about, both with Margaret and on my own. I have been making an effort to complete the two upcoming essays a good while before they are actually due, so as to have some time to think them over and have them edited.

In the evening, I read from the new Economist, responded to a mass of emails, and carried on reading about China. One of the emails, unexpectedly, came from my friend Ebony. She graduated from UBC in the same year as I did, also from the IR program. During that year, we were in the same native politics and Canadian foreign policy classes. She is presently in Japan: working and gathering volunteer experience, prior to applying to graduate schools. I haven’t had any contact with her since graduation, so it was good to get back in touch.

Next Saturday (November 19th) is the infamous Wadham College Queer Bop. [20 Nov: described here and here, with photos.] This is the notorious Wadham event to which “men come as women, and women come in next to nothing.” I plan to attend fairly briefly, and in an observational capacity. It is an event with such a reputation that I would be in clear violation of my mandate to report on Wadham life if I did not at least make a brief and guarded foray into the chaos. Since Wadham became obliged to adopt a closed-door policy for bops, tickets to the bop have apparently become desirable commodities. I am allowed to bring two guests so, if there are people out there who burn with desire to attend, I may be willing to provide those tickets, which are six Pounds apiece. The doors open at 7:30pm.

Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband is playing at the OFS Studio Theatre between the 15th and 19th. (My apologies for the terrible web page.) Since the tickets are only £6.50 and I have been keen to see a play in Oxford since I arrived, this seems like a good opportunity. Is anyone interested?

For tomorrow, the Social Sciences Library beckons.

An amusing story about huge pumpkin cannons.
In light of Margaret’s determination to participate in a tuberculosis vaccine trial for 300, here are some other experiments: one in Oxford and an interesting one on language.

Stats update and adventures in New College

Today’s statistics lab was a big improvement over the previous ones. Mark Pickup was absent, due to illness, but Robert Trager began the class by responding directly to our letter. He was understanding and sympathetic and both this week’s lab and this week’s assignment reflect a welcome change in methods and focus. We spent only half the lab working on STATA, with the rest devoted to discussing the statistical methodology behind an actual paper published in a major political science journal. For next week, we have been given another, as well as some responses to it, to look over and analyze. This feels far more relevant, and it is also an affirmation of the willingness of those running the program to change tack in response to our concerns. Professor Sir Adam Roberts, Director of Graduate Studies in International Relations , also issued an official statement today. Aside from all else, it is nice to be listened to.

After the lab, I went to G and D’s with Claire Leigh. She is taking a photography course, so we talked shop for a while before walking through the Christ Church meadows and then back up into Oxford. Like Roham and Emily, Claire formerly worked in banking. To be honest, words like ‘banking’ and ‘consulting’ have almost no substantive content for me. I understand what it means to clean an apartment building, or feed sloughs, or sell computers, but I don’t really understand what these positions involve, or if I could ever do them. That said, a few more pounds in the new NatWest account would do much to reduce my anxiety about paying for next year.

The dinner at New College tonight was very nice. I sat with Madjdy, Roham, and two more of Madjdy’s friends. The conversation, at times, was quite impassioned, but it was wonderful to pass a few hours of the evening engaged in heated debate with interesting people. After dinner, I had a bit of a wander around the New College cloisters with an employee of the Oxford career services, who also claims that she can get me a good summer job. Happily, she provided the two pounds by which unlimited drinks would be furnished to me in the New College MCR. I haven’t really the energy to get into details of tonight here and now. Indeed, there is a lot of night remaining.

Milan (Prazak) Ilnyckyj: definitive guide to pronunciation

Part I: Ilnyckyj

While it looks fearsome, this part of the name is quite easy. It is pronounced: ill-knit-ski, as in sick-crochet-snowboard.

Part II: Milan

For starters, how do you know if you are pronouncing it wrong?

If you pronounce the first syllable ‘mah’, as in “Mah name is Slim, what’s y’urs?” you are pronouncing it wrong. If you pronounce it ‘my’, as in “My blasted quadruped has scampered,” you are also pronouncing it wrong.

The first syllable is ‘mill’ as in: “Let’s head down to the Old Mill, where I hear John Stewart Mill has cooked up his famous cider.”

If you pronounce the second syllable ‘lawn’, you are pronouncing it wrong. This is especially bad if you used ‘mah’ as the first syllable, because then the two together sound like you’re saying: “Mah lawn needs watering.” Lynn, as in Lynn Creek or Linseed Oil, is also incorrect for the last syllable.

The right way to pronounce it is ‘lhun’, as in London.

The hardest part of all is properly timing and stressing those two syllables: mill-lhun. The l-sound should be pronounced twice, with a brief pause between them and the first l-sound lasting quite a bit longer than the second. This part takes practice, but frankly I would be rather pleased just to see the errors described above diminish somewhat in their frequent usage among my friends.

Part III: Prazak

My middle name is pronounced prah-Jacques and not pray-zack or prah-zack.

So, there you have it: Milan Ilnyckyj = mill-lhun ill-knit-ski. Perhaps it will help you remember that ILL-KNIT-SKI is like SICK-CROCHET-SNOWBOARD.