Writing – Page 65 – a sibilant intake of breath

Alternative Careers Fair

The better part of today was taken up attending the Alternative Careers Fair, over in the exam schools. I attended two sessions: the one on ‘Arts’ because it included Philip Pullman and the one on ‘Environment.’ Neither was exactly what I expected. Overall, the experience was interesting – and it was good to meet Mr. Pullman – but it did not assist me in finding employment for the summer. Of course, a ‘careers fair’ is generally meant to have a longer term focus than that.

The arts panel was heavily dominated by Lorraine Platt, a painter who spoke first and for more than twice her alloted length of time. A series of disjointed observations and repeated statements, I didn’t find much that was useful or insightful in her presentation. That said, if I was contemplating a painting career, I might feel differently.

Mr. Pullman spoke last, after a musical therapist, for about twenty minutes. A bespectacled, balding man, I am amused to note that he wore exactly the same shirt as is featured in his portait on his website. His presentation was interesting partly because it seemed to portray an unusually focused life for a fiction author. While he described a number of jobs he has done over the years, none of them involved any writing or any cessation from attempts at novel writing. While you obviously can’t get the sense of a person’s life in twenty minutes, it was nonetheless a vignette of a committed person. Three pages a day, he says, has been his standard from the beginning.

Pullman spoke comfortably and with humour, quite unlike the more overbearing characters who directed the next seminar. His stress upon the importance of writing a good first page, and a good first chapter, is definitely reflected in his books: particularly The Golden Compass, which I consider to have one of the most skillful openings of any book I’ve read. As for motivational advice, he offered the following tidbit: “You need to be slightly insane, really. That’s what kept me going.”

After the session, I spoke with him very briefly and got him to inscribe my copy of Paradise Lost, since it was already signed and represents the only piece of his work I have with me in Oxford. It was amusing to note that, among the group of young women with whom I stood in order to have a book signed, more than half were past or present students of Wadham College. That said, I didn’t recognize any of them.

The environment panel, which I attended after wandering the booths upstairs for a while and speaking with Natalie Lundsteen from the Career Service, included George Marshall and John Manoocherhri. Aside from an evident shared passion for the environment and for their work, the men were quite different. Mr. Marshall spoke with skill, but some hesitation, like someone who has never really enjoyed addressing an audience. He was careful to at least bracket and identify the bits of his short autobiography that might seem presumptuous or vain. His work on tropical forests in the Asia Pacific reminded me of Peter Dauvergne.

Mr. Manoocherhri, in stark contrast, tended towards the bombastic, the arrogant, and the foul-mouthed. While he initially came off as plain speaking, energetic, and direct, over the course of his presentation he became decreasingly attractive. He had a great willingness to pronounce himself expert on a matter, as well as a general mode of speech that was saturated with an over-certainty that diminished his credibility. While he did tell people much of what they wanted to hear (about how we will all have superb jobs in the environmental field), I don’t know if he actually contributed a large amount of usable information. That said, I am still glad to have attended his talk.

Employment possibilities for the summer remain elusive. My three forays to the career service have produced starkly different pieces of advice. I was told, the first time, that I should apply for a job doing consulting or investment banking, because they would help pay down my student debt and they aren’t terribly hard to get into if you can say the right things. The next time, I was told that I absolutely should not apply in those fields and, if I did, I would just get rejected anyway. Instead, it was suggested, I should look for a job related to writing or the environment. Today, I was told that any work I did on the environment or doing writing over the summer would almost certainly be unpaid, and that I should get a job in the college or in a pub in order to sustain myself.

‘Marketing myself’ is just the sort of thing I find difficult, frustrating, and profoundly unappealing. Applying for things requires exerting effort towards no productive end, save overcoming the various obstacles between yourself and a job. It requires a certain kind of distorted self-presentation that frequently borders on being deceptive. I hope I will be able to find some sort of position for the summer without too much of that.

Anyhow, I shall be working on my core seminar essay tonight. Not the most exciting option for a Saturday, by any means, but that which is presently required. Since all copies of the readings that can be withdrawn from the SSL have been, I need to go there at a time when the confined copies are relatively likely to be free. Tomorrow should be better, if I can get a good amount of work done tonight. I am looking forward to coffee with Margaret in the morning.

I realize that I never wrote anything about the big birthday party in Wadham last night. This is an intentional response to how bothersome writing anything about the college has generally been. Between people who absolutely do not want to be mentioned and people who are annoyed when they aren’t, the level of diplomacy involved is just beyond what I am willing to put up with at the moment. That said, I was quite glad to meet Seth and I hope the bloggers’ gathering he has mooted comes together soon.
My French is seriously slipping, due to total lack of usage. Does anyone know of a good free French news podcast that I could listen to, just to have some exposure to the language? Thanks.

Second quarterly Oxford bloggers’ gathering

Three months ago today, a collection of Oxford bloggers met at The Turf for beer and conversation. Now, a second instance has been proposed. The date and time proposed are February 10th (Friday of 4th week) at 8:00pm. The place: the Turf Tavern, off Holywell Street.

I look forward to meeting an even larger cross section of the Oxford blogging community this time.

Know your audience

I am curious about who makes up the readership of this blog. Most days, about 100 people take a look. The better part of those people come directly to the page, suggesting they are returning to it, rather than finding it through Google or another search engine.

Some aggregate information that may interest people: Based on data from the past few months, about 60% of visits to the blog are from people who have been here before, while about 40% haven’t been – at least from that computer. 13.65% of people find the blog through Google, while 15.94% are still finding their way here from the link at the old address. The blog is overwhelmingly read by people in North America and Western Europe, with a smattering in Australia, Asia, and Africa. 42% of visitors come from the United Kingdom; 37% from Canada; 16% from the United States, with no other single country above 1%. My election day post and the Oxford blog listing are the most popular single pages, though more than half of people leave the site immediately after looking at either.

On the technical side, just over 50% of users use IE, with 38% on Firefox and others using a collection of (sometimes very obscure) browsers. 78% of people use Windows, 17% use Macs. Like Firefox usage, this is well above the world average. The vast majority of viewers have screen resolutions of either 1024×768 or 1280×1024. 82% of you use some kind of broadband, lucky folks that you are. Eight of the ten most common phrases that people search for in Google and subsequently find their way to my site through the results of are people’s names. None of them are my name. Only two have anything to do with the title of the blog.

This is all information that gets automatically passed to servers by your web browser, if you’re interested in knowing where I got all these data from.

I would guess that the readership is dominated by members of the following groups:

Friends of mine, particularly those in Canada and at other far-flung schools and jobs
Family members
Former teachers and professors
People in the I.R. M.Phil
People in Wadham College, especially the MCR
People considering coming to Oxford
People considering taking the Oxford M.Phil in IR

Clearly, some people may fall into more than one group. I am curious to know what the relative shares are. Knowing would let me do a better job of writing things that people find interesting. I would be especially interested in knowing if there are people who are in none of these groups, but still read the blog regularly. If that is the case, what attracts you? In general, what would people like to see?

Of blogs and brevity

I have a new rule: at least for the time being. I am going to aim for focused, interesting blog posts that are no more than a few paragraphs. The writing should be better, more people should feel inclined to read it, and I should consequently have more time for academic work, or at least non-computer stuff.

I need to adjust the structure of life so that it involves more reading. Having seminars of 14 to 28 people, it isn’t really necessary to have read anywhere close to the total amount assigned in order to contribute to the discussion. As such, and especially without the possibility of being called upon to present, there is a lack of structural incentive to do a great deal of reading. For me, this might be most easily overcome by making reading a more social experience. The presence of others helps keep me focused and aids in resisting the desire to go and do something else – a desire that always becomes more powerful when the matter I am reading is not particularly compelling.

I started the copy of Haruki Murakami’s The Wind up Bird Chronicle that Tristan sent me for Christmas. Three chapters in, it definitely has the oddity that seems to be characteristic of Japanese film and literature. At the same time, it lays out the oddity in a way that is intentionally structured like a mystery – it’s clear that we’re meant to eventually learn what’s going on.

As always, speaking with Astrid this afternoon was interesting. Her personal policy of not engaging in meaningless chatter over MSN of the “so, what are you up to?” variety is one that frequently proves laudable, particularly when combined with her infrequent forays into that domain. She is in Argentina now, returning to Vancouver in about a month.

Check out Mica’s new website and leave some comments.
Unrelated, but dramatic, footage: watch an octopus eat a shark

“The thing you’re most proud of”

Last night, I had an extremely diverse collection of dreams. Most enjoyably, I dreamed about being in well-loved places with old friends: some of whom I haven’t seen in years. The strangest thing about such dreams is not how this familiar house can get transposed into that well known place or how these two friends, known years apart and who have never met, can appear together; rather, it’s how all these sorts of things can happen without eliciting surprise, often for several hours after you wake up, start drinking tea, and steel yourself for another day of academic reading.

After reading his entry about his father’s ‘journalling jar,’ filled with possible topics for journalling or blogging, I asked Tony whether I might make an attempt at one of them. The topic dutifully provided: “The thing you’re most proud of.” To me, this is an extremely straightforward question. Without a doubt, the thing I am most proud of is my group of friends.

Why does that come instantly to mind as my response? The reasons are both numerous and compelling. Firstly, one’s group of friends is not primarily a matter of chance. Anyone who lives in a city and goes to schools with 1,000 or 40,000 students has ample opportunity to meet people (though shyness and other factors may work against you). Even so, most people just glance off one another: interacting, perhaps, in some very brief and superficial manner before rebounding on diverging courses, perhaps to meet again in similarly anonymous circumstances. To meet people in the first place, therefore, takes both an application of effort and an acceptance of risk. The latter is especially significant for young people. The risk is generally one of ridicule or embarrassment, each of which stings a great deal for those lacking a solidly defined and defended identity. Indeed, I remember instances of severe embarrassment from five or ten years ago enormously better than those involving any other kind of harm.

Of course there is some element of chance involved in meeting people in such a way that you remember one another and seek each other’s company again. It helps to have one of the right sort of dispositions. It helps to have a memorable name or appearance. One cannot ever completely expunge chance from any complex human behaviour. That said, in this case it does not seem to me that chance is so serious a factor that it belittles the point I am trying to make. There’s nothing random about which people from around the world I would most like to come visit me here, or travel with somewhere else.

Spending the last four months or so in Oxford has been a reminder of another reason for which I am proud of my group of friends. Even with all my deficiencies with regards to long distance communication – my response to Meghan’s elegant letter from October still sits incomplete on my table – I have generally been able to maintain some kind of contact (perhaps infrequent, perhaps fairly concise) with almost everyone who I particularly want to know in ten and twenty years’ time.

I am proud of my friends because I feel them to be a diverse group and – critically – not one that would have assembled as it has without my involvement. One of the reasons for which I most enjoy throwing parties is because it gives me the chance to introduce people who might otherwise never see each other, but who are likely to have a connection. Introducing friends from one school or another, one group or another, or other combinations of times and places is a very gratifying experience. Perhaps that’s because it fosters the illusion of being central. Of course, there are many nodes to any social group (as many as there are participants, really) and there is a danger of this becoming some kind of Facebook-mimicking ‘look how many friends I have’ declaration. While that is related to what I mean, it has entirely the wrong tone.

The biggest reason for which I am proud of having developed the collection of friends I have is the way it changes the appearance of the future. In a profound and comprehensive way, a future that is peppered with people like Tristan, Jonathan, and Alison is much more easily embraced than one filled with faceless possibility. Partly, that’s the same sense of shared endeavour as is making the M.Phil program feel so rewarding. Partly, it’s the important knowledge that I will not be alone during the years ahead: perhaps the single greatest anxiety of the nervous extrovert.

In closing, I should stress one point that isn’t entirely obvious in the self-obsessed paragraphs above. This really is a remarkable group of people: honest, communicative, interesting, talented, and genuine. Every person who I call my friend impresses me in some way and has some capability that – even if I know I will never possess myself – I know myself to be the richer for having nearby. Likewise, I feel deeply indebted for all the instances of unprovoked generosity and aid that have taken place over the years. Particularly when I’ve been languishing in some sudden feeling of lingering solitude, it has been welcome indeed to be dragged off for a walk, a cup of coffee, or some more ambitious adventure.

An annoyance and a new statement of policy

A friend kindly brought to my attention that someone syndicated my blog as a LiveJournal account. This means that all posts appear there as well as here and that people can leave comments in both places. I ask you all not to do so. I do not consider this to be acceptable conduct. I am already giving this away for free (without even text-based ads): I just want to be able to decide the terms on which that happens.

By all means, use the Atom feed or a Bloglines account. You can even read it, along with the others I read, from my Bloglines account. Just do not re-post what is on this site wholesale somewhere else on the internet. I reserve the right to change what is written here when necessary and do not want large amounts of content on other servers. Likewise, it really diminishes the value of the time I put into building the site in this way to have it regurgitated in full elsewhere.

The choice of LiveJournal is particularly jarring, as I’ve long considered it an unhealthy component of the blogosphere. The ‘friends list’ system encourages a high school spirit of petty jealousies while the commenting system seems designed to spread malicious gossip. The only worse blogging services that I can think of are Xanga, which seems to focus on really ugly templates, and MSN spaces.

In short, do not syndicate this blog. I appreciate your cooperation.

Late December London Expedition

Happy Birthday Gabe Mastico

Preface

Yet another perspective upon the blog has reinforced the sense that people see it as a kind of elongated lament, or, at least, a complaint. Almost without reservation, that is used as a way of suggesting ingratitude. How can you be in such a place and yet dare to be unhappy? It’s that judgmental edge that troubles me.

My response to this is twofold. Firstly, I am not anywhere near so troubled as people seem to think the blog indicates. That is partly a reflection of how, and I am sorry to admit it, the blog is thoroughly sanitized. It is a drama – more of a dramatic reenactment of a life than a direct account thereof. The reasons for that must be obvious. Real lives are boring, especially when they revolve around pubs and libraries. Likewise, real thoughts jar in people’s minds. They provoke negative emotions, recriminations, jealousies, and the rest. The line to walk is one between honesty of direct statement and honesty of intention. The fact that even carefully worded entries are so frequently misunderstood is a reminder of why this must be done.

The second part of the response is to raise the question of what leads to happiness. Certainly, being involved in a worthwhile enterprise is a great boon. Some of the frustrations of the program circumscribe that, but certainly do not reduce it to such a point as some people seem to believe. Ultimately, I want the freedom to launch my own inquiries and begin tackling questions from my own direction and on the strength of my own arguments. This is what I thought grad school would be. Additionally, I am troubled by the increasing evidence that the meritocracy that feeds this place is a kind of sham. It’s not that people haven’t worked very hard to be here. Everyone here is clever and nobody is really lazy. At the same time, nobody is particularly disadvantaged either. Certainly, they have done more than people with comparable advantages – even people with greater ones – but they are not drawn from all the corners of humanity. We come from the corners of similar streets. Seeing that further increases my admiration of people like Viktoria Prokhorova, as well as Kerrie and Noral Hop Wo, who are out there working very actively to help mitigate some of the problems and injustices in the world.

Finally, the non-signposted part. The vital foundation of human happiness, at least for me, is in being surrounded by people who you care about. While I’ve made some really interesting friends here, there simply can’t be the kind of emotional depth that allows you to confront frustration, disappointment, loneliness, or anger. Those kind of anchoring relationships take years to form and are not lightly left behind, thousands of kilometres away. Also, life becomes much more animated when it is based around some shared romantic project: a tackling of problems together, a sharing of disparate interests and areas of knowledge, and the development of an identity that is at least provisionally shared. The lack of any such project is an impediment to realizing potential: both for achievement and enjoyment.

In hopes that this might help my perspective be more easily understood, I shall proceed.

Two Days in London

Unsure of when we were meant to meet, I lingered in Oxford on Wednesday until I got a call from Ian (Dr. Ian Townsend-Gault of the UBC Law School, to be formal about it). It was then a scramble to the train station – where news of a delay was conveyed – and thus to the bus station. Even allowing a three minute pause to buy an Oyster card, I made rather good time to the house in Islington where we had dinner with Ian’s uncle-in-law, two of the uncle-in-law’s daughters, and another family member. Apparently, the house belongs to one of the members of the Barnes and Noble families, of book selling fame. Ian’s uncle-in-law also seems to have led a fascinating life: interviewing Mao in 1941, while living in China, for instance. The house was certainly nicely adorned with art, as well as being well saturated with interesting conversation.

Included in that conversation was an invitation to meet Ian’s uncle-in-law’s ‘circle’ at a pub in London today. While I accepted enthusiastically, having heard them universally described as a highly interesting group, it did not work out in the end. Despite arriving my standard fifteen minutes early and waiting a full hour and a half at what I am certain was the right pub, nobody I recognized arrived. I even conducted five complete reconnaissance missions through the whole pub looking for them. After the staff began to universally direct scowls of disapproval in my direction (despite having bought a drink some time ago in an attempt to placate them), I eventually departed. Perhaps I misunderstood something about the place and time where we were to meet.

But, I am getting ahead of myself. After the fine dinner and interesting conversation, I spent the night at the flat of another former student of Ian’s. After waking at an hour I usually strive to avoid, I accompanied him to Victoria Station and the Heathrow Express before making my ultimately ill-fated trek to Mulligan’s. My thanks go out to Ian, once again, for his hospitality, as well as his overall – and very welcome – way of listening to you. Neither patronizing nor overpowering, I have always appreciated it.

After abandoning my vigil at the pub, I met Michelle Bourbonnais: a young woman with whom I graduated from UBC, who was also part of my international law seminar with Michael Byers, and who is low living and working in London. We met at the Tate Modern and took a wander through the newly reorganized galleries. Everything has shifted around since I went there with Sarah Johnston in September. I couldn’t even find two of my favourite pieces: a spherical, organic looking sculpture evocative of a shell (used as one of my LiveJournal icons) and an animated film from South Africa called A History of the Main Complaint.

One new piece that Michelle and I both enjoyed was a large abstract painting done by Joan Mitchell. The work is untitled, and I found it particularly captivating insofar as it includes the kind of patterns that your brain tends to just mark off as ‘very complex,’ unless, for some reason, you choose to really delve into them, or are compelled to. The impossible intricacy of an oil spot on cement you cannot really delve into until you can cut off the part of your brain that trivializes and ignores it. Then, you can just wander down its avenues – each filled with ephemeral epiphanies about the nature of space and perception.

After wandering back across the Millennium Bridge towards Saint Paul’s, we walked to Covent Garden and spent a couple of hours conversing in a place indelicately called ‘The Coal Hole.” Along with the traditional smoky pub atmosphere, it had the noteworthy flourish of a collection of friezes near the ceiling: cross-illuminated and made from something resembling white marble. It was a curious touch, but an appreciated one. It was certainly good to see and speak with Michelle. I was in good spirits when I boarded to coach back to Oxford at Victoria Station.

PS. I am reading an excellent new book, but let that be a subject for a later post. I’d rather get back to it than yack about it, right now.

Christmas Day reflections

Oxford today looks like a stadium after the concert: receipts and little bits of paper ground into the earth, a few stragglers wandering about, but an overwhelming sense of sudden and profound emptiness. That is less the case within Wadham, where Tanushree and I are occupying Library Court collectively and where I have been getting to know the young woman who is standing in the for porters: the daughter of the head gardener, now studying psychology and philosophy somewhere up north.

Today included tolerable progress on the reading front, though the volume of material continues to overwhelm as much as it inspires. Regular infusions of the more melodious Tracy Chapman songs helps maintain perspective and focus, as do those of the more sonorous of Tori Amos songs. I remain particularly transfixed by the live songs on the second disc of To Venus and Back: they are reminiscent of the two Tori Amos concerts I have been lucky enough to attend. At the first, she was in her soaring, Godlike mode (embodied in songs like “Precious Things”). The second concert, which I saw with Nick, was firmly rooted in the playful side of her character, as represented by songs like “Mr. Zebra.” It’s hard not to believe that music has the ability to shape cognitive processes, both in the long term and the short term. It becomes internalized in a way that is profound and probably impossible to completely isolate and understand. Something Nicole Kidman says in the commentary that accompanies Moulin Rouge, about how sung words are interpreted on a different conscious level, definitely has something to do with it. Read as naked characters on a white page, even the cleverest lyrics lack the huge bulk of their poignancy and power.

For this upcoming Oxford term, it strikes me as a good idea to become actively affiliated with at least one club. Back at UBC, I developed a five-pillar strategy that was meant to promote the absence of depression, the living of an active life, and the general pursuit of satisfaction. The basic idea behind it was to always have five distinct threads of life running at the same time. School was always one, and generally one that could be balanced against things that were going poorly. Others included photography, long-term romantic relationships, debate, hiking, and other such activities that occupy time, introduce you to people. and use physical energy. Given the not-insignificant time that it requires, as well as the people to whom it introduces me, I think blogging can be counted as my second thread, after school. Now, I just need three more.

The danger that this approach is meant to mitigate is the danger of setbacks on one front colouring the whole experience of life: creating a self-perpetuating cycle of perceived failure and dissatisfaction. With five threads, each fairly distinct from the others, the chances of that are significantly reduced. It also allows for a versatile approach to allocating time, especially if some of the tasks (like photography) can expand and contract in response to the overall burden being imposed by tasks that cannot be deferred: things like school and romantic relationships.

In closing, I think, it’s best to extend my greetings and best wishes to my friends around the world. I was reminded of my appreciation for them yesterday, when I called Alison, Greg, Ashley, Sasha W., and a number of other people to wish them an enjoyable winter break. If there is one thing I’ve appreciated most about life – especially since starting university – it has been the chance to meet the people who are now my friends. They are challenging, interesting, intelligent people who constantly force me to reconsider my positions on things, while simultaneously providing affirmation about the purposeful nature of life, and the possibility of improving the world. I hope very much that I will have the chance to introduce some of the people who I’ve met in Oxford to people who I met elsewhere. Providing connections between heterogeneous groups of people who will gain something from one another is among the most rewarding forms of inter-personal relations.

While further attempts to fix the sidebar so it appears in the correct position in IE continue to be fruitless, it is becoming clear that literally hundreds of people are having the same problem. Somehow, discussions like this simply do not help me.
Anyone interested in commenting on my brother Mica’s videos, as have been discussed here previously, should do so on the blog which he created for that purpose. This will probably conclude my making links related to this, since there is a forum specifically intended for it now.
In response to some confusion that was related to me yesterday, perhaps I should make clear that the blog includes several types of posts. The most common are daily posts, which include a photo of the day, and are published either after midnight or with the timestamp 12:01am, when they are published earlier than that. This is to ensure that each daily post appears under the date heading of the date after the one about which the post is written. In addition, there are post types that are made with unmodified timestamps, regardless of when they were written. These include photo posts, like the five from the Baltic trip, topic posts, like the one about the Tallinn occupation museum, and steganographic posts. Daily posts can also have steganographic content, as can image files.

Journey completed, much to do

Now back in Oxford, I am a bit overwhelmed with how many tasks there are to be completed in the next little while. The first group of them is post-trip consolidation. That includes finishing up the running tally of expenses for Sarah and I and choosing a way to repay her the difference between our contributions. It includes doing laundry, unpacking, and dealing with a huge mass of mail: both electronic and physical.

Also to be completed are the buying of Christmas gifts, the reading of books of neo-realism, and the making of further and more extensive lists.

Just being back on my Mac makes me feel hopeful, however. The blog only looks truly right under Firefox in OS X. Let it be known to one and all that Internet Explorer is a lousy browser. Just look at all the idiotic bugs web designers need to deal with, knowing people will choose to view their pages in IE. After trying for hours to get the sidebar to always appear on the right hand side and not have wierd formatting errors in the lists, I am letting it be for now. For those of you still using Microsoft’s substandard browser, here is a glimpse of how the blog is meant to look:

For your own security (IE has as many security bugs as it does of other sorts) and for the sanity of amateur and professional web designers, please get Firefox. Once you install it, you probably won’t even notice the difference most of the time. When you do, it will be because you note with appreciation how much better a blog or other page now looks.

A heretical position, indeed

Thinking back to my days of university level debate – days which might not have ended, had the Oxford Union been more reasonably priced – I remember how, at tournaments, you would often see teams huddled in the hallways, frantically pouring through a magazine in search of something to talk about. Almost invariably, that magazine was The Economist.

Last night, while trying to fall asleep, I read one of their articles that embodies all the reasons for that. It’s controversial, even extremely so, but also backed by sound and unexpected argumentation. In short, it makes you think. Equally importantly, you could advocate it and never risk seeming a complete fool. On that basis I would suggest that people take a look at this week’s Lexington column, about why the Democrats should abandon support for Roe v. Wade. (It startled me, as well, when I read it.)

The point isn’t to embrace the criminalization of abortion, but to stop having its legality founded upon a ruling that any honest lawyer, judge, or legal scholar will acknowledge as touchy, in constitutional terms. The need to defend this precedent, as well as the desire to attack it, also has the unfortunate effect of politicizing the judiciary, especially the Supreme Court nomination process. Given 80% support for legal abortion in the United States, would the Republicans risk undermining their support and splitting their support base in an attempt to criminalize it?

Like The Economist‘s campaign for the legalization of all drugs, this is a pretty radical idea. While it’s not one that wins me over entirely, largely due to the obvious risks involved, it does represent something that you don’t often see in journalism: getting past the tired talking points of different sides and presenting something new. For that reason alone, it’s worth having a look.

For those who don’t have access to the article linked above, send me an email and I will forward it on to you.