Category: Oxford

Posts about living and studying in Oxford, the Oxford system, etc

Adios to Oxford, albeit temporarily

Green plants

Files, books, drafts, system recovery discs, emergency rations, bed sheets, caffeinated mints, and more: I am now essentially ready for my thesis writing week in Devon. The sheets I was instructed to bring; the rest is meant to be essential thesis gear. I sure hope this trip proves as useful for advancing the thesis writing as I hope. Once I get back, I will only have about a week of editing time left before the thing needs to be sent off for printing.

Best wishes to everyone for the next eight days.

Scientists and remedies: brainstorming

Statue in Nuffield College, Oxford

Tonight, I am brainstorming connections between scientists and remedy design. Addressing environmental problem basically seems to revolve around changing the intensity with which an activity is being carried out (ie. fish or cut down trees at the rate of regeneration) or finding substitutes (using solar power instead of natural gas power). Both kinds of solutions involve some critical imputs from scientists. Not surprisingly, my focus here is on types of actions that pertain specifically to my case studies.

I have come up with the following. Does anything else spring to mind?

Technological development

Development of:

  1. Alternative chemicals to replace ones that have been problematic (for instance, CFCs and POPs)
  2. Alternative mechanisms for energy generation, storage, and transmission
  3. Energy-using technologies that are more efficient
  4. Plant varieties that require fewer pesticides
  5. Mechanisms for the disposal or long-term storage of unwanted by-products
  6. Less polluting mechanisms for waste disposal

Predictions

Anticipating the consequences of:

  1. Continuing to behave as we have been
  2. Adopting one or another alternative approach
  3. The combination of our impact upon the world with possible natural changes, such as major volcanic eruptions

Providing information about uncertainty:

  1. How good are our predictions?
  2. If they do fail, in what ways might it occur (what is not included in the models?)
  3. What kinds of uncertainty are out there (ie. magnitude of effects, distribution of effects, etc)

Predictions about technological development:

  1. What will the state of environmentally relevant technologies be in X years?
  2. Is it better to invest in the best technology we have now, or continue research and wait (partly an economic question)

Big ideas about the world

Establish and describe the limits of nature:

  1. Is this a factual or ideological exercise?
  2. The same facts could justify differing views
  3. Some ideologies have elements that can be pretty effectively undermined by science (ie. eugenics)

How should we treat uncertainty?:

  1. Are there categories of risk that it is more ‘rational’ to worry about?
  2. When does it make sense to ‘wait and see’ and when does it make sense to act in a precautionary way?

Naturally, those last few items extend into territory that is not obviously scientific. One big question about the social role of scientists is the extent to which they do or should contribute to such hybrid debates, with both empirical and ethical dimensions. Also, there is the question of whether they do or should do so ‘with their scientist hats on’ or whether they are no different from any other actor, once they have strayed from their area of core competence.

Now with thixotropic ink

St. Hilda’s College, Oxford

With the addition of St. Hilda’s, my collection of all the Oxford colleges actually located in Oxford is complete. At some point before I go, I will need to duck out to Kennington to have a look at Templeton College.

Today, I received the bullet-style Fisher Space Pen that I bought on eBay. The suggested complement to the ‘hipster PDA,’ the pen is meant to partially embody my new spirit of active task completion. The design is an elegant one, though the experience of writing is not as enjoyable as with my fountain pen or my nicest ballpoint pen. I’d say it is on par with the four colour pens that are my mainstay, though with a bit less scope for note categorization and a lot more of an eye-catching look.

I haven’t been able to test it underwater or in space so far, but you can expect an update once I have.

[Update: 29 March 2007] The space pen writes perfectly well on an index card submerged beneath a few inches of water. The ink does smudge if you rub it, however. I would like to test it at a greater depth. At some level, the water pressure must be greater than the gas pressure in the ink cartridge.

[Update: 13 November 2007] My father has started using a Hipster PDA as well, having seen me using mine during a recent visit to Toronto. We shall see how useful he finds it and how long he keeps it up.

Oxford college selection

Ben Saunders, a fellow Oxonian blogger, just wrote a post on choosing your Oxford college, and I thought I might jump in with a few suggestions of my own. For the uninitiated, the college you choose will have a fairly big impact on your time in Oxford. It will be your major point of contact with the university administration, one place where you meet a lot of people socially, and possibly a place where you will live and/or take meals.

There are a series of important characteristics that Oxford colleges have in greater or lesser amounts, all worth considering:

  • Location (the criteria most international students seem to rely upon for selection)
  • Reputation (some are old and famous)
  • Finances (some will be able to help you financially)
  • Library resources (some have excellent subject specific libraries)

To aspiring students of international relations, I suggest you ask yourself the following: “Would I rather be at an old, famous, rich college near the middle of town or a smaller, more specialized, and much newer college on the edge?” In the former case, I would suggest somewhere like Merton. The location is good, the grounds are very nice, the chapel is stunning, and I am told they have a good bit of money to toss around. In the latter case, I would suggest St. Antony’s. It is all graduates, and pretty much everyone is working on politics, IR, or economics. You also get a library with good resources for your subject, and preferential access to a similar library at Nuffield. Nuffield is a good choice if you prefer a very quiet, sober sort of collegial environment.

That said, each of the colleges has features to recommend it. The considerations above include some that didn’t occur to me when I was making my own selection, particularly in terms of library resources. Living in a St Antony’s residence along with two of their students has allowed me to use a fair number of their facilities. Crucially, however, that does not include the library, which colleges sometimes guard jealously from outsiders. Wadham, the college I chose on account of location and a friend’s recommendation, has been very good to me and I would recommend it to people who are particularly keen to avoid the pretension that is so often a mark of the Oxford experience goes. The gardens are also very nice, especially in the spring and summer.

As Ben explains, the decision isn’t one to stress over. It is just worth doing a bit more than putting a map of Oxford on your wall and throwing a dart.

PS. One last thing to consider: as a graduate, you select one college in your application. If your program accepts you but the college does not, you will probably be assigned to one of the colleges that get the fewest applicants. This may be reason enough to avoid the really famous colleges like Christ Church and Magdalen.

Next time, find something to count

My supervision today highlighted how much work remains to be done on the thesis. Also highlighted were some of the things I have learned over the course of the project about the issue area, and about the nature of such investigations. When you are studying something that thousands of people have studied, and you don’t have any new empirical data to contribute, it can be hard to believe that you are making a substantial contribution to the discourse. It is hard to be both well-researched and original in your thinking.

If I ever undertake another academic research project of this magnitude, I will be sure to include at least some empirical investigation. That way, even if you are treading in familiar territory, you are at least placing some newfound objects within that territory. As such, it is always possible to point to a discrete addition you’ve made to the landscape: a series of interviews, an archive examined, some methodologically rigorous meta-study concluded.

I have until Friday to bludgeon my three substantive chapters (problems, consensus, remedies) into some semblence of order.

Thirty days until thesis submission

Spiral staircase in Oriel College

With my departure for the reading week in Dorset a mere nine days away, the pressure is on to submit as complete a thesis draft as possible, so there will be at least some opportunity for discussion before then. As such, my aim is to complete my consensus chapter by Sunday evening, at which point I mean to have it physically delivered.

The prospect of moving beyond the thesis is quite an alluring one. For months, the project has been dominating my attention – though often more on account of the anxiety it induces than in terms of workable ideas being generated and put on paper. The efficiency with which a project is completed basically seems to be inversely proportional to the total size. Dealing with a single email, one can use almost 100% of the time devoted to action actually working. For a research paper, it seems unlikely to be much above 50%. For a thesis, I would be surprised if 30% efficiency was being achieved.

Une deuxième langue

With the intention of stemming the rate at which I am forgetting my French, I am thinking of taking a refresher course at the Oxford Language Centre next term. Specifically, I was thinking about the intermediate-level LASR course (two hours a week). The LASR courses are less intensive than the OPAL ones and do not yield a formal certificate. That doesn’t matter to me, however, since I would be doing this simply to retain my own ability to work in the language.

Has anyone done a language course there? Did you find it useful? Any tips for getting accepted into one of the courses, as I am told they don’t always have enough spaces?

Climate change and the Amazon

Tonight, I saw a public lecture associated with the Oriel College conference: Climate change and the fate of the Amazon. Notes on Thomas Lovejoy’s presentation have been posted on my wiki. Most of it was stuff that I had heard or read before in multiple places, but it will be useful to have another source to cite on a few issues, for the thesis.

The issue of biodiversity also really drives home the instrumentalist v. inherent value perspectives on nature. If golden toads provide no concrete benefit to human beings, should we be concerned about them going extinct. If we are, what level of resources is it sensible to devote, given the myriad other problems that exist?

What’s the big idea?

Cactus spines

Sorry to be writing more about the thesis. I spent a good fifteen minutes trying to think up something else to write about, as well as flipping through the websites most likely to provide inspiration.

The trickiest thing I am doing at the moment is trying to come up with an over-arching argument for each of my three substantive thesis chapters. Each one has a lot of content – many sources, issues identified as important, and specific points about those issues – but none really has a single massive point to prove. Personally, I am fairly happy to present things as a series of related vignettes on consistent topics and themes. It seems, however, that something more directed and integrated is required. That creates the danger of setting up straw men to knock down. Coming up with an important, novel point that takes 7000 words and a couple of dozen sources of diverse kinds to prove is not an easy thing.

PS. As part of my thesis-completion drive, I am boycotting Adium (a program that combines MSN, AIM, ICQ, Google Talk, and other message programs). People who want to speak with me should try Skype: more meaningful and less likely to carry on for many hours. My apologies to all the friends I have been neglecting, while trying to get through this.