Category: Rants

Posts where I spout off on one topic or another

Study strategies

Most of my fellow students will understand what I mean when I describe the point in time, before a test, when your strategy switches from that of best practice to that of last ditch defence. This is the point where studying (or revising, as it is called here) becomes cramming.

As a strategy, it’s not too bad. There will always be details that you cannot retain in the long term: because they aren’t interesting to you, because they are very specific, or because they just refuse to stick. The revising phase cements the major themes, concepts, and ideas that can be easily remembered in both the short and the long term. The cramming phase sprinkles the desperate remnants on top, where one hopes they will not be jostled off before the exam.

Maddening little bits

Useful for testing eyesight

Whoever designed the expensive electronic devices that ship with these tiny plastic doo-dads must have been aware, on some level, that there were people out there who would actually try to keep track of them. As such, it can only be understood as an act of cruelty that they were made so small and, in many cases, actually transparent.

Without exaggeration, I can affirm that I have spent at least one hour of my life looking for each of these, and many more in a state of paralytic anxiousness about them. That’s particularly true of the tiny, soft, black things. If I lose one of those, my expensive headphones become worthless. Once, after being up all night, I spent almost an hour searching the main road beside the Nanaimo Skytrain Station, looking for one of these that had fallen off while I was crossing. I did find it, but nearly got killed by passing cars a half dozen times, while crossing the road looking straight downwards over and over again.

£1 coin included for scale.

Great power history

While revising, I have realized that ninety percent of all the history I have ever done has been the history of six countries between around 1900 and the present. Here they are, complete with a crude trend line for their overall influence/affluence:

  • United States (Up)
  • Britain (Down)
  • Russia (Down, Up, Down)
  • China (Down, Up)
  • Japan (Up, Down, Up)
  • Germany (Up, Down, Up, Down, Up)

Top performer: USA
Most improved: Japan
Most troublesome: Germany
Most dramatic: Russia / China, tie
Most graceful decline: Britain

The history of other countries has mostly been bound up in their importance, vis a vis this crew. For instance, the transition from British to American hegemony in the Middle East, the role of France in developing and maintaining the interwar order in Europe, India as the jewel of the British Empire, American containment strategies in Europe and Latin America, or the various imperial phases of all and sundry.

I am fairly sure you could get a distinction on my International System 1900-50 qualifying test without mentioning any other states.

Praise and censure

In a bewildering move, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) has actually praised the quantitative methods training offered by the Department of Politics and International Relations. This is the same training that 27 of the 28 people in my program formally protested the poor quality of, in a letter to the department. I think the predominant view of the statistics portion of the M.Phil, among those taking it, is that it’s the primary evidence that just because something is taught at Oxford, that doesn’t mean that it’s taught well. It’s the black mark within an otherwise excellent program. A great deal of dissatisfaction with the course was also expressed to me by several members of the faculty, as well as the program director.

Hopefully, the ESRC was looking at one of the other statistics courses being offered by the department, rather than the one given to people doing M.Phils in International Relations. Ours managed to please nobody: neither those already experienced with statistics nor neophytes, neither those who see a lot of value in quantitative methods nor those who prefer other methodologies.

To any fellow M.Phils reading the blog: would you not agree that the quantitative methods training we received was not deserving of praise of this kind?

Trying to increase nose-grindstone proximity

Jeeps look good in black and white

Revision began in earnest today and, as I predicted before, it managed to induce that little tinge of raw panic that is the basis for all academic achievement. Many thanks to Claire for stripping questions from the most recent qualifying test from the lists of past questions I will be studying from. As I am meant to write a practice test consisting of last year’s exam for Dr. Hurrell by the tenth of April, and it would hardly do to know the questions while I am revising.

If I want to submit the fish paper to the MIT International Review – with submissions for its inaugural issue due by the 10th of April – I will need to get started on editing and reformatting it. Doing so is quite difficult because I don’t remember the sources well or have them with me. I wrote this more than a year ago, after all. The submission guidelines do say that: “After initial submission, writers whose articles are being considered for publication will be asked to resubmit articles according to more specific guidelines.” As such, it’s probably best to do a moderate edit and see if they’re interested, before I commit a lot of time.

When contemplating the fact that April 10th is also the day during which I am to move, I may have stumbled across a universal law:

The law of deadline gravitationThe times and dates when projects are due will approach one another at a rate directly proportional to the number of hours the respective projects will require to complete, and inversely proportional to the distance already separating them.

This explains why big tasks cluster – like periods of examination – but why mundane tasks arise constantly and individually. While much theoretical work remains to be done on this concept, it seems plausible to me that the attractive force may only apply itself to certain classes of tasks: just as photons are exempted from the effects of magnetic fields.

Looks like I may not have as much time to try out my new bike as I thought. Of course, spending a week in Malta leaves me with no reason to complain about having to buckle down now.

More iPod trouble

Well, the iPod that Apple sent back because it was apparently fine will not be recognized by my computer at all and now simply boots to an unhappy Mac icon when you turn it on. I wonder if they actually looked at the thing before they decided that “issues reported concerning [my] iPod” “were found to be within Apple’s specifications for acceptable performance, usability and/or functionality.” I’ll call them again tomorrow. Looks like it’s going back to the Netherlands.

Ides of March, safely passed

Burdock near the Isis

First Easter break expedition imminent

My train to Chichester – via Basingstoke and Cosham – leaves Oxford at 7:15am on Saturday. Despite the best intentions of shifting my sleep schedule to make the requisite 6:00am wakeup more tolerable, I have been pushed further and further towards the pattern that I can only conclude is natural for me at present. That is to say, going to sleep sometime after 2:00am and then waking up at about the same point after 10:00am. Without classes or lectures in the morning or the burning shame of the scout discovering you still asleep, there is little that is able to propel me into wakefulness before then. Even my best efforts at setting the alarm on my phone and then hiding it across the room with a can of highly caffeinated energy drink have met with no success whatsoever.

In the end, it’s not much of a problem. I will have plenty of time to sleep on the train.

I am meant to arrive in Chichester three hours before the wedding and it seems probable to me that I will be able to walk to St. Richard’s Church, wherever it may be, from the train station in a fairly small fraction of that period of time. After the wedding and the reception, I will have most of Sunday to spend exploring the area, prior to my 4:30pm train back to Oxford. Is anyone familiar with the region? If so, is there anything you would suggest having a look at? The distance to the seashore seems modest, so I may go have a look at that.

Where there’s smoke

After five months of exposure to the social lives of Oxford students, my leather jacket is now thoroughly saturated with the smell of tobacco smoke. Despite efforts to air it out – sometimes even hanging it directly in front of an open window where I induce air flow – the scent seems to have become fairly deeply ingrained. Maybe entombing it in a box with some baking soda or activated charcoal for a while would be more effective.

The psychological impact of wearing the jacket has become odd. My earliest associations with tobacco have to do with somewhat threatening, carpeted places where I wasn’t happy to be. It’s a feeling that lingers whenever the stale smell of absent but infused smoke is present. The odour is certainly not one that I enjoy, or an happy to have lingering around me. It seems to be much more easily and thoroughly integrated into things made of natural substances. My wool and leather clothing has all taken on some measure of the smell, while no article of clothing made from artificial fibers has done so to an overly great extent. It all makes me disappointed about how months still remain before the smoking ban in British pubs comes into effect.

  • I have set up a temporary fix for the Blogger images problem. For the present, I will host the images on the BlogSpot servers, using a different account. Once the bug is fixed, I will repost the images on my FTP server. [19 March: This has now been done.]
  • I got more useful mail today: information on the Malta adventure, from my mother, along with details on the next student loan installment. Once this arrives, I should have this year and about 20% of next year covered. Still waiting on word from the Chevening Scholarship, Armand Bombardier Scholarship, Canadian Centennial Scholarship, and the Oxford Overseas Research Scholarship. The next batch of applications goes out in April.
  • In terms of blogging and being on instant messengers, internet activity among my friends in Canada seems to be markedly down. Is this because nice spring weather is starting to appear?
  • Did you know that light bulbs in England don’t screw into their sockets, like their North American equivalents? Along with running at twice the voltage, they also have somewhat fearsome looking sockets with large bare electrodes spring-loaded to hold the bulb in place.

NatWest: a very poor bank, indeed

Britain’s position as a global financial services hub is certainly not well reflected in the conduct of the particular bank I chose when I arrived in Oxford. Despite my dissatisfaction, however, the sheer level of hassle involved in switching banks as an international student will probably keep me where I am. I post this as a warning to those who will come after.

I continue to be astonished by how bad the online banking offered by NatWest is. The password system is frustrating and insecure. It’s impossible to pay your NatWest credit card bill online, even when you applied for it at the same time as you created your account. The site doesn’t even let you transfer funds between your chequing and savings accounts, unless you go set it up to do so in person. They also managed to forget to pay interest on my savings account for February. Those considering opening a bank account in the United Kingdom should absolutely avoid this bank.

Part of the problem is how NatWest has two separate divisions: one that runs the branches and knows nothing about the credit cards and web banking, and another that plays the opposite role. Despite the apparently clear delineation of duties, there seem to be serious communication problems between the two. They also have some truly bizarre rules about documents they can only send to your permanent address, even when it’s outside the U.K. and they know that you will not be there. Add to that high service charges (ie. $25 for a bank draft) and low interest (less than the rate of inflation) and you can understand the reasons for my dissatisfaction.

[Update: 20 May 2006] Another really awful thing about NatWest is the way their credit card payments work. At the start of the month, I am automatically billed some random amount between five and twelve Pounds. If I cancel the automatic payment, I get fined – even if I don’t owe any money. Since I almost never use the card now, that means I am building up more and more of a positive balance. Even so, they will ocassionally charge me a Pound or so of interest… seemingly at random and despite the fact that I don’t owe them any money. I’ve tried calling their telephone support line for an explanation, but I was kept on hold for ages and finally turned over to someone who didn’t seem to know anything she wasn’t reading straight off her screen. Completely unacceptable, all in all.

[Update: 12 February 2007] The NatWest Online Banking site now allows me to pay my credit card online. Previously, I couldn’t do anything but move money from my savings account to my chequing account, and not the converse. This is a distinct step forward.

The thesis or gadgetry: one will drive me mad

Bridge beside the Isis

Educational matters

During an animated ninety minutes, Dr. Hurrell and I went over my two most recent papers and a number of ideas for the thesis. I feel like we’ve hit upon something exciting. The idea is less to look at institutional arrangements meant to use science to develop better policy, and more to look at the conceptual linkages between science, politics, and policy.

The most straightforward view, which I identified, is what I call the planning/engineering dichotomy. Planners decide that it might be nice to have a bridge across Burrard Inlet. The engineers work out if it’s possible, what it will cost, and how to do it. A similar model is commonly implicitly applied to the relationship between science and policy. Science identifies problems, and then outlines possible solutions for policy makers to debate and implement. Really poking at that model could be a good starting point for a broader discussion. What is the character of science, as it relates to politics and policy? What does it let us do? Without getting off topic, the question might be expanded still further. For instance, asking what the purpose of the natural world should be, from a policy perspective. Is it simply a matter of working out how much good stuff we can squeeze out of it without destroying it for ourselves or future generations?

The next stage is to read probably a dozen or so books, in order to get a more extensive sense of how science and policy are understood with regards to each other and what it might be interesting and useful to expand upon. I will start with Dr. Hurrell’s own book, as well as Andrew Dobson’s Green Political Thought. It’s also worth re-reading Peter Dauvergne and Jennifer Clapp’s Paths to a Green World. I am excited about the project, in any case, and not just because of the enthusiastic energy that I tend to leave supervisions with an excessive amount of.

Without giving too much away, I will also say that there’s something in the works on the fish paper front.

Damnable contraptions

Due to its increasingly erratic behaviour, iPod the third is going the way of iPod the first and second: back to Shanghai to be replaced. The first one was defective straight upon arrival, pausing automatically at the slightest jolt. The second one had a hard drive that failed while I was driving through Hamilton, Ontario with my cousin and brother. Sasha’s iPod later succumbed to the same fate. Because it is laser etched, it will probably take them three weeks or so. Whereas the first one had the tendency to pause whenever it was bumped the slightest amount, this one is just freezing every ten or fifteen minutes, changing languages once in a while, and refusing to be recognized by a computer that recognizes its brethren with alacrity. Godspeed, little white rectangle.

Apple is quite good, if a bit slow, about fixing things. The lesson is probably that it’s worth spending the extra $60 on a three year Applecare plan. When I can actually manage to tolerate a few weeks without it, the iBook will likewise be going in for service on account of its one defective USB port.

Strange IR theory words:praxis: The practice or exercise of a technical subject or art, as distinct from the theory of it ; Habitual action, accepted practice, custom. ; Action that is entailed by theory or a function that results from a particular structure.reify: The mental conversion of a person or abstract concept into a thing. Also, depersonalization, esp. such as Marx thought was due to capitalist industrialization in which the worker is considered as the quantifiable labour factor in production or as a commodity.PS. One email I’ve been most anxiously awaiting since Saturday night has still not materialized. The only thing for it, for the present moment, is just to keep waiting.

PPS. No word either on the Chevening, ORS, or Armand Bombardier awards. No word is better than a negative response, but I am really crossing my fingers to get at least one yes this time.

Theorizing about theory

One of the curious things about studying international relations theory is the sense in which it feels like an intellectual black hole. When we studied history, I read about the Middle East in the interwar period. Now, I know more about it. I can tell you something about the establishment of the House of Saud or the determination of the borders of the League mandates. I don’t feel as though I have been engaged in a comparable process, as regards international relations theory. I’ve read a lot about the various theories, and discussed them in seminar, but I don’t feel more intellectually aware about the subject matter.

Studying theory is a matter of self-definition. It’s about finding a framework that lets you do what you want to do, protected by walls of academic and intellectual respectability. It’s also about finding ways to strike back against those whose agendas contradict your own. Little wonder, then, that it tends to become petty, vindictive, and driven by ego. Perhaps, in some profound and inaccessible sense, it deepens your understanding of international relations issues. If so, it doesn’t feel that way while it’s happening.