Milan – Page 96 – a sibilant intake of breath

Triple lecture day

Today’s lectures comprised an interesting academic triptych. The first, on whaling and international maritime law, contained the most that I did not know beforehand. The second, on international organizations, in a general sense, had the most novel form of delivery. The third, on Marxism as ‘the greatest fantasy of the twentieth century’ was the best attended and least fulfilling.

Patricia Birnie’s lecture on whaling covered the treaties and institutions involved throughout the twentieth century, though it clearly could not do so comprehensively in only an hour. Dr. Birnie has apparently written quite an important textbook on international maritime law – another book to add to my aspirational reading list. One big focus of this lecture was the ambiguities in sections 64, 65, and 120 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. I didn’t know that, despite the present moratorium on whaling, there are exemptions for ‘scientific research.’ Apparently, Japan authorizes ‘scientific killings’ on a level akin to that which a commercial whaling industry would involve. Like the great apes, it seems intuitively obvious to me that marine mammals deserve a level of moral consideration that prohibits their hunting for commercial purposes. While I can understand and appreciate the cultural imperatives behind whale hunting in certain communities, it seems to me that no cultural tradition can be maintained rigidly, forever, in the face of new knowledge and circumstances. Hopefully, this is one of many phenomenon that we will see the end of in our lifetimes.

During the event, I met Abigail Powell, who is doing an M.Sc in something closely related to ecology at Green College. She is solidly on the science side of the environmental continuum: the kind of person I am meant to encourage policy makers to understand, and be understood by, according to my research proposal for this degree. As we were enjoying the free sandwiches, I learned that she actually worked for the Secretariat of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants: the treaty which I researched last year, in the context of the role arctic native groups played in formulating it. With luck, we shall have the chance to discuss it at greater length at a later date.

The second lecture took place as part of our advanced study of IR series and was delivered by Neil MacFarlane: the head of the IR program and a man who speaks in a manner that I would consider absolutely unique, if it wasn’t precisely the same as that of Dennis Danielson, the man who taught the honours Milton class I took with Tristan and Meghan. Given that Dr. Danielson and Dr. MacFarlane are both Canadians who studied at Cambridge, perhaps the similarity is understandable.

Dr. MacFarlane’s lecture was about international organizations and represented an attempt to ‘prove the hard case.’ What he meant by that was that he intended to show how, even in matters of security, where international organizations might be expected to have the least impact and where traditional realist assumptions would be most likely to hold, institutions have had an extensive importance. He outlined six roles that he feels IOs play, then examined them through two cases. He brought up the whole debate about humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect as one example, the international ban on anti-personnel mines as the other.

The third lecture also had a Danielson connection, in the form of repeated uses of the word ‘eschatological.’ It took place between Professor Leszek Kolakowski of All Souls, upon whom great praise was heaped, and Professor John Gray, visiting from the LSE. Professor Kolakowski delivered what struck me as a simplistic and overly general criticism of Marxism. Basically, a less refined version of the argument printed in The Economist and previously linked and debated on this page. Perhaps due to the age and eminence of his opponent, the response given by Professor Gray was tepid. The only real objection he raised to Professor Kolakowski’s argument seemed obligatory, rather than genuinely argumentative. At the very least, they should have acknowledged the extent to which the valid elements of the Marxist critique altered the form of contemporary capitalism, thereby making it less likely that some of Marx’s predictions would come to manifest themselves.

In order to attend that lecture, I opted out of the professional training in the social sciences lecture that our notes of guidance indicate that we should attend. Last week’s wasn’t terribly helpful, and it seems to be directed towards much more experimentally minded social scientists, anyhow.

Whenever I am presented with political theory now, I have a tendency to evaluate it as a kind of internal panel. Sitting on it is Milan the provocateur, who tends to defend liberal humanist assumptions and steal arguments from The Economist. Also present are simulated versions of Tristan, Sarah Pemberton, and sometimes others – as the subject warrants. My final judgment has much to do with where the simulated debate ends up.

Between the second and third lecture, I took a bit of a walk with Emily. We returned some books, bought some dinner, and visited the home and workshop of a jeweler who repaired her ring. It was quite an interesting place to see – down in his basement. In particular, I found the stones, sorted and filed throughout the room, fascinating. Heavily represented among them were fossils and plants and animals embedded in quartz or amber. One drawer looked like the cover of the copy of Stephen Jay Gould’s Wonderful Life, which I glanced at so many times back in the days when Kate was still sifting through tiny, prehistoric teeth under the microscope. Emily is definitely a good person to follow about, if you are looking to see interesting and unexpected things.

In the evening, I read from The Search for Modern China. It’s a hefty book, to which I wish I could devote the deserved level of time and attention. As it stands, I shall read it as thoroughly as external pressures allow. The fact that I need to produce a paper on a topic closely related to the book in about ten days time also grants me a certain authority to devote time to it.

Short additions

The army is trying to make artificial gills. That would be quite an incredible technology, if it could be made to work.
It seems that Sony CDs can infect Macs also. Looks like I’m never buying a CD from Sony Music again. Lots of people in California are suing Sony. The post where I first discussed this is here.

Happy Birthday Shannon Smart

Today was the kind of day where things click together. I spent a few hours dealing with the banks in Canada and the U.K. and we are now set to make another attempt at a transfer. In the process, I even managed to unfreeze my application for a NatWest credit card. In the morning, I finished a stats assignment that I am more confident about than either of its predecessors. I also managed to secure some books for the two upcoming papers. In the afternoon, I began reading Jonathan Spence’s The Search for Modern China.

Good things are also happening on various non-academic fronts. Tomorrow night, I have an engagement to spend some time with Emily: something that has definitely been missed of late. Friday, I am having dinner at New College. Saturday, if I am lucky, I might snap up a spot for the Walking Club’s trip to the south coast. Getting out of Oxford, particularly for a bit of a hike, would be excellent. Next Wednesday, I am going to dinner and a movie at St. Antony’s.

Looking out into a fast-darkening world at five in the evening is definitely one of the stranger and more difficult things about the fall. It requires you to rewire the bits of your brain that tell you what kind of lighting conditions you really ought to be doing work in the presence of: widening that set to include some rather more sombre ones. That said, the work these days is interesting. As we get into the timeframe of the second world war, we get into the period when all the major elements of the present international system emerged. It cannot help feeling relevant and important, especially when expressed with such obvious passion as Donald Watt has injected into his book. I was struck by the incredibly wounded tone of his introduction, in which he lists the destruction wrought by the war that he is about to describe the emergence of.

My favourite thing about the fall are the blustery days. Those at UBC should take a walk to the top of the sandstone escarpment near Place Vanier during one of them, when the wind has contributed white-capping energy to the sea, when the sun is glinting off of it, and when there are enough low-lying clouds about to get the full sense of a planet in motion.

In the midst of tonight’s reading, I had the chance to talk with Astrid for about three hours. I won’t say much about it. Just that it’s a relationship that has always had an astonishing ability to avoid becoming mundane. I also got to speak to Alison, for the first time in what has become too long. She will definitely be among those who I write to when the inter-term break allows it.

Two Interesting Lectures on Thursday the 10th

The first thing I will attend at Oxford directly related to environmental politics is tomorrow. Professor Patricia Birnie will give a presentation entitled “Exploiting the ambiguities of Article 65 of the Law of the Sea Convention: current practice of the International Whaling Convention” at 12:30pm. It is taking place in lecture room 6 of New College and I encourage anyone interested in the law of the sea to come. Free sandwiches will be provided.

Also tomorrow, at 5:00pm, there will be a lecture at St. Antony’s on the topic: “Marxism: The greatest fantasy of the twentieth century?” Professor Leszek Kolakowski and Professor John Gray will be speaking.

On an entirely unrelated note, several people have asked me to change the font for the blog back to Garamond. This I would be happy to do, since it is a lovely typeface, but for the following problem. When I set the blog up so that Garamond is appropriately legible at 1024×768, the screen resolution used by 67% of readers, anyone viewing the blog on a computer without Garamond, and therefore seeing it in the fallback typeface, sees all the text as ridiculously huge. At present, my knowledge of CSS doesn’t permit me to overcome this, so I will need to stick to fonts that both Windows (83% of readers) and Mac OS (12% of readers) come with by default.

Academic Tempo Rising Once More…

…no more time for wistful diversions.

As with all prior Tuesdays – and all those coming soon – today was a long run of academic stuff. This is the kind of day best started with about a litre of coffee, served black. In the morning, I read about appeasement for a while before attending the core seminar. Charitably, Dr. Wright has assigned the topics for the next three weeks to particular people: freeing those who have not yet presented from the anxiety of not knowing when they shall. Likewise, in the cases where people will be called upon to give a second presentation, volunteers have been recruited. I am not among them.

As with last week, I decided to eat lunch instead of attending the Changing Character of War lecture nestled between our two blocks of classes. In the afternoon, I attended the quantitative methods lecture, and then worked with Claire and Alex on stats until it was time to wander over to the event with the Dean. Thankfully, this week’s assignment is rather more clear and comprehensible than its forebears. I am not overly apprehensive about completing it tomorrow morning.

As the photo shows, I was correct to speculate earlier that the event with the Dean would be informal. The event was fairly large and impersonal: with a short, generic speech delivered by the Dean and rather a lot of good finger-food. The tiny vegetarian pizzas alone probably accounted for more calories that I had consumed in the previous week, and the task of processing the lipids they contained is still far outstripping the task of contemplating tomorrow’s statistics assignment, in terms of what percentage of my energy I can assign to it.

As a group, the M.Phils managed to submit a signed statement about the statistics course to the department today: endorsed by 27 of the 28 people in the program. The final text looked much like this (link to RTF), and the document had an impressive air of solidarity, with all our signatures laid out in two columns. Let us hope that it induces some change, as well as a widespread knowledge that much is rotten in the state of STATA. While the head of the program told me, today, that “constitutionally [he is] not empowered to conduct high level intervention,” I am hoping very much that someone shall.

On the social front, Madjdy has kindly invited several other members of the M.Phil and I to the guest dinner at New College on Friday. Just a ways up Hollywell Street, New College is among the closest of the other colleges. It is also a rather larger and more substantial seeming place than Wadham. Included within it are a massive Aztec-style pyramid in honour of Oxford’s plague victims and the remaining portion of the Oxford city walls. Margaret tells me that the mayor of Oxford is charged with walking atop them once a year, to ensure that they are in good order. I am looking forward quite a bit to taking up Madjdy on his kind invitation.

Also to be looked forward to: Alexander Stummvoll, another of the IR M.Phil students, has invited me to the screening of an Italian film at St. Antony’s on Wednesday the 16th. Title T.B.A. (It’s an odd, but not unpleasant, fact that I seem to do more college events outside Wadham than within it.)

Also balancing out school a bit is the prospect of becoming involved with a club. Bryony has suggested that I join the Oxford University Walking Club. It costs much less than the Oxford Union and offers the chance to do something I would be rather keen on, namely explore the U.K. outside of Oxford. Any Oxfordians interested in more information can join the club’s mailing list by sending a blank email to this address.

PS. Tomorrow, it is crucial that I secure some research materials from the SSL, as well as completing my third stats assignment. The following papers are upcoming, and must be kept in mind:

17 Nov: (Dr. Hurrell) To what extent was the victory of the Chinese Communists influenced by external powers?
22 Nov: (Core Seminar) How far were the war aims of the Big Three influenced by the ‘lessons’ of the inter-war period?

PPS. I also need to do something urgently about my increasingly overdue battels and fees. In a development that has me literally pulling out my newly-shortened hair, I got this message from the Bank of Montreal tonight:

Unfortunately, your funds could not credit to your account in UK because the International said wrong account number is XXXXXXXX. Please make sure that your account number right. your funds have been credited to your BMO account.

Words just cannot express the frustration of getting a response like this after a month of mailing this and that piece of paperwork. Especially since, as far as I can tell, the blocked out number is correct. Oh, and they charged me $60 for the failed transfer anyways.

Cowley Road, a supervisory meeting, and the Gulf Islands

This morning, I went to Cowley Road and got a haircut, as well as three bottles of Nando’s Extra-Hot Peri Peri Sauce. Along with Blair’s Original Death Sauce, I maintain that it is the tastiest hot sauce that is commonly available. The fact that there is a Nando’s in Oxford may considerably increase the likelihood of my brothers visiting here, especially Sasha. I have had to drag both of my brothers, practically kicking and screaming, into Nando’s and Anatoli Souvlaki: the initially alien venues that are now their favourite places to eat. Somehow, the experience never translated into genuine culinary adventurousness. Thinking back on the variety of reasonably priced and excellent restaurants in Vancouver makes for a grim contrast with my experience in Oxford, where virtually everything I have eaten has been raw and from Sainsbury’s, and where I haven’t eaten out a single time at a restaurant.

I got the hair cut for nine pounds at a place called Saleem’s: run by a young Palestinian man with a cousin in Toronto. He had an extremely aggressive style of cutting hair which, along with his very dull scissors, meant that quite a bit was more torn out than cut. That said, Nora, who actively counselled against the shortening of my hair, concedes that it could be rather worse. While shortened hair might not be the best thing to accompany cold and wet days in Oxford, I just feel better with hair that never enters my line of sight.

In the evening, I met with Dr. Hurrell in Nuffield to discuss my paper on the Middle East. Partly owing to how busy the period leading up to last Wednesday was, it was not my best work. It suffered particularly because nobody but me looked it over before it was submitted. Going all the way back to editing high school essays with Kate, I have been highly appreciative of the contribution an intelligent and critical external eye can bring to a piece of thought. Nonetheless, Dr. Hurrell and I had a good discussion. I am learning that the most important thing for writing something that will please him is clear structure and the energetic interrogation of the key terms in the question. Sloppy analysis earns a minor rebuke, at best, even when it can be defended orally. I look forward to when the supervisory relationship becomes one more oriented to directing me towards sources and methods of research, in preparation for the thesis and major optional papers.

In the next ten days or so, I am to write Dr. Hurrell another paper either on whether appeasement is a useful or defensible concept, in the context of the 1930s, or the extent to which the victory of the Chinese Communists was influenced by external powers. Since I will need to do more reading on the latter anyway, I may write on that. It’s worth recalling that the Tuesday after next, I have another paper due for the core seminar.

Tomorrow evening, all of the new graduates are invited to have drinks with the Dean of Wadham in the Old Senior Common Room. I am not sure how formal an event it is but, this being Wadham, it couldn’t possibly be worse than shirt-and-tie. It will be good to see a few of the grad students who don’t live in college and who I therefore have not seen since 0th week.

Last night, I dreamed about the Gulf Islands. Located in the Georgia Strait, between the mainland of British Columbia and Vancouver Island, this collection of small communities is both curiously isolated from the rest of B.C. and uniquely able to embody the spirit of the province.The last time I set foot on one of these islands was in the period before moving out to Oxford. Along with Tristan and his brother, I spent a day cycling from one end of Galiano to the other. I have a few photos from the trip online. The best things about it were the view of the ocean and other islands that we had from the top of the bluff where we ate lunch and the rather enjoyable dinner which we had at a small restaurant fairly close to the ferry terminal at the end of the day’s long ride.

All told, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time on and between these lovely, Arbutus-strewn places. In early high school, along with the gifted program at Handsworth, I went on a week-long kayaking trip between them. Similarly, I took part in two week-long sustainability conferences organized by Leadership Initiative for Earth, each of which took place on a tall ship as it moved between the Gulf Islands. On the first voyage, I met Jane Goodall aboard our tiny, wind swept ship: The Duen. On the second voyage, I was assigned to the largest vessel: the Pacific Swift, where I met David Suzuki and got to help coordinate the movements of the fleet.

While I am not sure if Bowen Island and Gambier Island can be called part of the Gulf Islands, as they are located northwest of Vancouver, inside Howe Sound, there is much that marks them out as similar. Gambier Island is the home of Camp Fircom, where I volunteered for two summers as a leader. Almost all of my North Vancouver friends were Fircomites at some point: Nick, Neal, Jonathan, Emerson, Caity Sackeroff, Alison Atkinson, as well as scores of acquaintances. Camp Fircom was a modest place, with a far more restricted budget than some of the neighbouring camps run by more evangelical churches. It may please some and irk others to know that I was entirely at home there as a committed athiest.

Bowen Island is dominated by the bulk of Mount Gardner: one of my favourite smaller mountains in the Vancouver area. I remember with great satisfaction the time when Meghan and I climbed it together one day, in lieu of attending the drunk and disorderly Arts County Fair event which messily concludes each year at UBC. I remember looking out from the helipads on top, there to service the telecom equipment located up there. From that vantage, you can see the Sunshine Coast stretched along the mainland to the north and the mass of urban Vancouver stretching out eastwards and southwards. Bowen has also been the location of several excellent parties I have attended, at the homes of two former professors. I tip my metaphorical hat to them, in case they may be reading.

My favourite of all the Gulf Islands, though, is Hornby Island. That expression will be instantly understood by anyone who has ever spent time there. It is an almost pathologically laid-back, carefree kind of place. It’s the sort of place where sitting in the shade, inside an inner-tube, reading the short fiction of Isaac Asimov for a few hours marks that one out as a particularly productive day. It’s also where I met Kate: the fascinating young woman who walked past the cave in which I was reading The Catcher in the Rye and who I spent the rest of my time on the island in as close contact to as circumstances, and juvenile existential dread, would allow.

Like the Cinque Terre, the Gulf Islands are a place where I would like to eventually write a book. These places have no particular resources for that purpose, save the sea and the mountains, as well as the calm atmosphere. The Gulf Islands, in particular, are the kind of places that you can never entirely manage to leave: they linger like an outlier point that drags your whole understanding of the world away from its former mean.

PS. Jessica suggests that I should include more descriptive titles, as well as explanations for where links go. This I shall endeavour to do.

Recalling my first European visit

Today was dark and rainy. It involved little more than sitting in different parts of the Social Sciences Library reading The Economist, Donald Watt’s How War Came, Anthony Adamthwaite’s The Making of the Second World War, and the collection The Origins of World War Two: The Debate Continues, edited by Robert Boyce and Joseph Moile. In spite of reasonable efforts to do so, I don’t feel particularly compelled to read for this week’s topic, on appeasement during the 1930s. That said, it is fairly likely that Dr. Hurrell will assign me a paper on it during our meeting tomorrow.

Despite a period in the JCR bar with Kelly and Nora, a phone call home, and the doing of laundry, today certainly cannot be considered a particularly energetic one. As such, it seems a better idea to use this space describing something else.

The first time I went to Europe was before Sasha, my youngest brother, was born. Mica, the brother who is either two or three years younger than I am, depending on who has already had a birthday that year, was still drinking out of the kind of bottles that infants are like to. Very clearly, I remember a piazza, somewhere in Italy, when on a hot and sun-struck afternoon, Mica and I splashed each other and sprayed water at one another out of the aforementioned bottles.

During that trip, I tried swimming for the first time, as a place called Spagio Romea. I remember this large, toadstool shaped protrusion in the shallow end of the room that stood over it like a massive umbrella. A sheet of water would pour over its rounded top, then fall like a glassy plane before breaking frothily at the boundary with the pool’s surface. Aside from the new experience of swimming, quite possibly the best thing about Spagio Romea was the unending supply of free Mentos candies: a thing that had not yet been seen in North America.

When I was rather younger than I now am, but not nearly as much younger as when I first went to Italy, I spent a lot of time swimming. For several years, the smell of chlorine never really left my clothes and hair. During my later years there, I remember cycling from Cleveland Elementary School – which Jonathan, Alison, and I attended – to William Griffin Pool, through Edgemont Village.

Back then, the Red Cross designated swimming levels by colours: beginning with yellow and ending with white. I had to take maroon at least three times, but ended up finishing white and life-saving II before my age would permit me to move on to the next level, which I believe was called Bronze Cross. After two years of not swimming with any regularity, while I was becoming old enough to take that course, I found myself quite completely unable to do so. As I am sure anyone who has done something quite actively, several times a week will know: you can’t just take a two year break and then begin again where you left off.

I haven’t really swam since, except once in a while and always with the pressing knowledge that I used to be rather better at it. Even though I still enjoy doing it, the gracelessness with which I manage it is more than enough to dissuade me from doing so except under the most casual of scrutiny. Ineptitude that you have always possessed can be laughed off, but newfound ineptitude is a mortifying thing.

First Cowley Road foray

Today was refreshing. I took a walk to Cowley Road with Margaret and was excited by what I saw: intriguing looking ethnic restaurants, the brewery where the Hobgoblin Ale enjoyed at the bloggers’ gathering is made, as well as plenty of bike shops, used book stores, and small grocery stores. I am not sure whether my initial comparison to Commercial Drive is an accurate one. The balance between businesses is quite different (though the profusion of relatively inexpensive barber shops has rekindled hopes that my hair will soon return to a manageable length). The not-inconsiderable distance from Wadham to the area has made me think again about getting a bicycle. They had some used ones available for about eighty quid. I am not sure how much it would cost to have my bike in Vancouver sent by the cheapest form of surface mail, but that is worth looking into as an alternative.

Today also involved a lot of non-academic reading. I read a very interesting thesis about how John Walker – a spy in the American Navy – conducted an incredibly effective espionage campaign on behalf of the Soviet Union over a period of years. In particular, it is illustrative of the kind of huge security failures that can take place when there is inadequate communication between different agencies, as well as excessive secrecy applied in the wrong places. I also read from Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters, which Nora passed on to me when she found out that I was reading the sequel: Witches Abroad.

I also purchased the Philip Pullman edition of Paradise Lost and read the introduction and first two books. Reading Book II to Nora the other day reminded me what an engaging and enjoyable poem it is, and how worthwhile it will be, in the long run, to have a nice copy. The only bits I have a recall particularly well are the second book and the invocation to the Muse. I am not entirely certain of whether it is the right sort of reading material to mark out the spaces between stats and the study of international history in the interwar period. In the end, though, what could go wrong?

I called Lindi this evening to wish her a happy birthday. It was good to speak with her. She is still working on research for NASA, though her boss is apparently doing classified work for the Department of Homeland Security, as well. In ages of the world long past, Lindi and I were lab partners for Biology 10 – back at our mutual high school. When I was in first year, she lived in the tower adjoining mine in the Totem Park complex at UBC. She had considerable skill at playing the piano, as well as miraculous abilities of cooking better food than the cafeteria could offer, using only a miniature fridge and a toaster oven. Despite the fact that we share an enthusiasm for tramping about in the wilds of British Columbia, I can’t remember a time when we actually managed to do so together.

Surrounded, for the second night in a row, with the bursting and banging of fireworks and self-charged with the role of reporting on life in Oxford, I set out to find Guy Fawkes Night. I should have known better. I began heading southward, down Cornmarket and then St. Aldates, across the Folly Bridge and down Abingdon Street. I was following the boom and flash of explosions that always seemed about a kilometre and a half away: due South.

What I realized, eventually, is that that Guy Fawkes Day is a decentralized holiday. My efforts to find it fared no better than the efforts of Bilbo and the dwarves in The Hobbit to crash the forest party of the elves. Guy Fawkes Day happens all around, but nowhere where people really congregate – at least, nowhere I could find. Several times, once I was about three kilometres out of Oxford, I passed a field from which a huddled group let forth a few volleys of fireworks, but there were no bonfires to be found and nothing with the appearance of a thing that a stranger can just wander into.

This is the antithesis of Vancouver’s Symphony of Fire: in which enormous masses of people congregate in the same place to watch a large, centrally provided show of pyrotechnics. It’s a different kind of community in Vancouver, I suppose: one too large for an individual to play a role in defining, but one inclusive enough that it can just roll along, adding new people to its bulk.

All that said, the night is yet young – the JCR bop that is to occur tonight hasn’t even begun, though I already have a good sense of what it will involve. Despite the very heavy police presence that Friday and Saturday nights seem to bring to the centre of Oxford, it can be an extremely rowdy place. Not in the sense of violence, but rather extreme noisesomness and general low-level harassment of passers-by.

And in luxurious cities, where the noise
Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers,
And injury and outrage: and when night
Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons
Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.
(PL I:498)

Perhaps, with the passage of a bit more time, I will make another attempt to locate a Guy Fawkes bonfire. It would definitely help to have some inside information from a longer-term resident than myself. Likewise, it would be good to have someone to explore with. The cluster of people with whom I’ve spent the bulk of my time is really very small, and I soon begin to feel guilty for imposing upon them. I must widen my circle of social acquaintances, so as not to excessively press myself upon any of them.

PS. Here is an interesting video (Quicktime) of what you can manage if you are bold enough to attach a Mac Mini driven projector to the side of a Berlin subway car.

Happy Birthday Lindi Cassel

Personal narrative:

So ends a chilly fall day in Oxford: the last few days and nights here have heavily involved sweaters and jackets. The air has that particular crispness that, in Vancouver, would make you wonder if one of the next few days just might be the one day of snowfall we will get that year.

Today brought a new issue of The Economist, though no stats-related declaration. Apparently, it is to be worked on more over the weekend. I also received an email from Dr. MacFarlane in response to my letter today, in which he counsels me to cooperate with other students in making a proposal: “If there are others who feel similarly, it might be useful to make representations collectively to those in charge of the curriculum in question.” Having official sanction takes some of the fun out of it, but increases the chances they will listen to us.

Tomorrow, I am making my second attempt at finding Cowley Road. The first was with Nora last night and, partly owing to our very vague sense of where this fabled street is located, we ended up in the grassy expanse of Oxford’s South Park instead. It’s a place I had been to once before, in the summer after twelfth grade, when I attended a Radiohead concert there along with a young woman who I met in London. By night, and after the close quarters that embody Oxford, it seemed massive.

Tomorrow’s attempt at finding Cowley Road is taking place in the morning, with Margaret, and will include a determined effort to find the Tesco’s located there. Having purchased all my food so far at Sainsbury’s, it’s time to have a look at the competition. Hopefully, they will have Kimchi Noodle Bowls and Dave’s Insanity Sauce – both of which are tragically absent from even the large Sainsbury’s near Nuffield. Cowley Road, for those unfamiliar with the place, is the core of the more ethnic part of Oxford: the place I am told you should go for good Indian food or unusual groceries. It might be fairly accurate to describe it as Oxford’s Commercial Drive (Sarah, please comment on the comparison) and I am therefore understandably keen on finding it. I would rather like to make the acquaintance of at least one resident of Oxford who is not attending the university.

Academic commentary:

During Dr. Welsh’s lecture yesterday, I pondered why the kind of ‘scientific’ approach to international relations much loved by neo-realists strikes me as so inappropriate. Partly, I think, it has to do with what science is good at. Science is good at formulating theories on the basis of things that are either simple enough to be directly testable or that can be broken down into bits that are. So far, at least, it is much less capable of dealing with complex dynamic systems: whether climatic patters, ecosystems, stock market interactions, or human thought processes. For the kind of things that you just cannot understand by breaking down into testable bits, the scientific process as it has been generally applied cannot offer a great deal of understanding. This is not to say that science isn’t mounting an increasingly determined and effective effort to deal with these kinds of phenomena, but merely that it is a long way from achieving it. Consisting of complex interactions between individuals, institutions (national and international), states, and non-state actors, international relations falls much more into the category of interdependent complexity. Like picking one strain of conversation out of the general hubbub of a busy pub or recognizing complex patterns, understanding IR is something that the brain has an intuitive ability to comprehend that tends to exceed our mathematical ability to model.

On Monday evening, I am meeting with Dr. Hurrell to discuss the second paper I have written for him. The present enjoyable lull in schoolwork is destined to be short-lived. Doubtless, he will assign me another paper to write during the following ten to fourteen days. The next statistics assignment is due on Wednesday (does anyone want to get together to work on it?) and the next core seminar paper is due on the 22nd of November: six days before my birthday and in the middle of the period during which Nick Sayeg will be in the United Kingdom. At least it is extremely unlikely that I will be called upon to present in the core seminar on Tuesday.

Miscellaneous bits:

More distressing news on the present level of respect being shown for human rights by the American government. (Link to NY Times) Sometimes, it is positively scary to have such a neighbour as Canada does.
Anyone who has always wanted to buy one of Napoleon’s teeth now has the opportunity.
It looks as though Canada has another federal election upcoming: the last one having taken place when I was in Europe the summer before last. For someone in the riding where I will vote (North Vancouver Capilano), the two candidates with any hope of being elected are the Liberal and the Tory. Given that choice, sleaze or no sleaze, I am going with the Liberals. They certainly have their failings, but they tend to be moderate in the right places and progressive where they should (though often more slowly than could be justified). Paul Martin has definitely been something of a disappointment as a leader – especially in terms of repairing Canada’s international position – but he has not been all that bad, in the end. Additionally, I feel fairly positively towards Don Bell – our present MP and former mayor of the District of North Vancouver.
For some reason, there was a lengthy period of fireworks tonight. They seem to be coming from at least three locations: the closest being New College. For some reason, when I am not actually watching them, fireworks always make me nervous. They make me think of artillery bombardment, which is odd given that I’ve never actually heard it. The persistent sirens, coming from all over the city, don’t help matters.
Tomorrow is Guy Fawkes Night, in which the British burn in effigy a man who famously tried to blow up Parliament in 1605 (five years before Wadham College was founded). I would be interested in seeing this tradition played out, so if anyone in Oxford knows where a bonfire will be taking place, I would appreciate the information.
This evening, I made a big spreadsheet outlining all my Oxford costs. Once you add up battels, college fees, vacation residence fees, and university fees, it comes to $10,849.19 a term, for three terms a year. That’s 28% higher than the estimate that I was sent back on the 4th of April, after the cost of dinners has been credited back to me, but before you incorporate the cost of food and everything aside from university and college fees. It was only when I broke the whole thing down that I realized that Wadham is charging me $62.75 a term for bed linen cleaning. I shall have to buy some sheets and opt out of that in future periods. Fingers now tightly crossed, once again, for a good scholarship next year. I will find out about the Commonwealth application in December.

Autumnal Oxford

Today was a gusty day – the fall wind tore yellowed leaves from the trees and change was in the air. I’ve always felt thrilled and empowered by windy days – they remind me how the world is not only capable of being changed but, at times, practically bursting with desire to do so. Even as you are being blown around, you are reminded inescapably that you have a will and the capacity to make a difference. That was particularly evident after our excellent lecture with Jennifer Welsh, when eighteen members of the M.Phil program met to discuss the matter of salvaging the quantitative methods course. Sitting around in the lounge beside the DPIR, I felt like part of the council of demons in Book II of Paradise Lost.

No! let us rather choose,
Armed with Hell-flames and fury, all at once
O’er Heaven’s high towers to force resistless way,
Turning our tortures into horrid arms
Against the torturer; when, to meet the noise
Of his almighty engine, he shall hear
Infernal thunder, and, for lightning, see
Black fire and horror shot with equal rage
Among his Angels and his throne itself
Mixed with Tartarean sulphur and strange fire,
His own invented torments.

We will issue a joint declaration to the department tomorrow. On a related note, Tristan is apparently now on strike, in his capacity as a research assistant at York. He is not, it seems, terribly keen on the idea. Hopefully, it will not last too long.

Jennifer Welsh, according to many people who spoke to me before my departure, is the Canadian superstar in politics at Oxford. I spoke with her for a while after her lecture about how many of the problems of political theory evaporate once you have a normative determination. Once you get beyond theory for its own sake, you can pick and choose the useful bits of all the theories out there, as a means of understanding the world and advancing certain goals. I look forward to how she will be heavily involved with the core seminar next term, when it changes focus to contemporary debates in international relations theory.

Her lecture outlined the key elements of neo-realism, reo-liberal institutionalism, and constructivism as general areas within IR theory, as well as the critiques they make of one another. She was an engaging and effective speaker who made her points comprehensibly and with skill. Overall, it was a reminder of the reasons for which the Oxford IR program is really quite excellent overall. She has encouraged us to read the Sage Politics Text on International Relations, which may end up being the first book I buy for myself in Oxford.

In the evening, I went to my first lecture for the Professional Training in the Social Sciences course which, according to the Notes of Guidance, we are all meant to be taking. As it happens, it was delayed and poorly publicized. Only three of us were actually in attendance. The session focused on professional ethics in social science research, so it struck me as particularly ironic that it took place in the Said School of Business. As the lecturer explained, most people interested in business think that Ethics is a county in England.

Tonight, I am going to take a bit of a break: see whether I can find something good and non-scholarly to read, generally relax, and go to sleep early. Tomorrow, I will get started on the readings for next week’s core seminar though, having presented last week (however badly), much of the pressure is off.

PS. No animals or gargoyles passed near my camera today, but I am keeping my eyes out for them.

PPS. I am eyeing the signed Philip Pullman editions of Paradise Lost at Blackwell’s with ever-diminishing restraint.

Just drifting

After a month in Oxford, you begin to realize the extent to which this is nothing like a unified institution. I don’t have the foggiest idea about who coordinates the departments and the colleges, if anyone. I’ve never had to deal with them. The closest I’ve come is some vague contact with pan-university organizations, such as inter-college mail or the university computer services. Ultimately, this place is a million academic niches; a weird underwater ecosystem where it is equally possible to thrive and be eaten by a barracuda.

This morning, I headed over to the Manor Road Building to work on statistics. I ended up banging off a strongly worded letter to the people at the department responsible for course organization. The extent to which stats is interfering with everything else I am trying to do, while not conferring anything of value upon me, is just not tolerable anymore. I finished the second assignment but, after getting 58% on the first one for failure to use the right sort of graphs and label them as desired, I am not confident. I feel rather better about the paper for Dr. Hurrell, which has now been delivered to a Nuffield pigeon hole.

I finally met my college advisor today. I dropped by the tutorial office to say hello to Joanna – my favourite Wadham employee – and discovered that Dr. Paul Martin was in the room at the time. We’ve now exchanged a few emails. It seems that he will be organizing some kind of tea with his various neglected charges in the days ahead.

Soon, I hope, I will have the chance to head down to London. Getting out of the three kilometre circle that is defining and enclosing my life might be empowering. I don’t particularly have anything to do in London, or any money to do it with, but I am definitely open to suggestion.

On a completely different note, I’ve decided to try taking photographic requests. You post something from Oxford that you want to see, whether specific or more theoretical, and I will see what I can do to capture it on a digital sensor.¹ Please keep in mind that this blog is meant to be the kind of thing that bright young eleven year olds who dream of going to Oxford one day can read. Well, almost.

[1] This idea has nothing at all to do with how boring photos of computers and libraries can be.