climate, photos, miscellany
I picked up a library copy of John le Carré’s The Looking Glass War because all my own books were in moving boxes, and to begin re-habituating myself to intensive reading in the lead-up to my comprehensive exam in August. The novel is what you would expect from le Carré: not sensationalized, conveying a sense [...]
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“History is a bath of blood,” wrote William James, whose 1906 antiwar essay is arguably the best ever written on the subject. “Modern war is so expensive,” he continued, “that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of [...]
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Here’s the actual abstract from “Acceleration of snow melt in an Antarctic Peninsula ice core during the twentieth century“, published in Nature Geoscience: “Over the past 50 years, warming of the Antarctic Peninsula has been accompanied by accelerating glacier mass loss and the retreat and collapse of ice shelves. A key driver of ice loss [...]
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One element of developing Toronto350.org has been learning how to do complex cooperative work using a devoted group of volunteers. This afternoon, we are having a ‘bibliography party’ for our University of Toronto divestment brief. We will be taking all the sources people have collected and putting them into biblatex format. It will then be [...]
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An extremely preliminary version of the Toronto 350.org divestment brief has been pulled together. Now to work on the second version of my self deception paper (due Tuesday), a new paper on globalization for my Canadian politics core seminar (due Thursday), my forthcoming presentation on the patriation of Canada’s constitution (the 26th), and my two [...]
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I am entering the final long run of work for this term. For Toronto350.org, the big thing is the brief we are preparing explaining why the University of Toronto should divest from fossil fuels. For my coursework, I have three major papers to complete. The final paper for my Incomplete Conquests course – which can [...]
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Mark Jaccard in The Walrus: “The Harper government supports accelerating the extraction of fossil fuels from our soil, which will send more carbon pollution into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, that same government brazenly assures Canadians that it will keep its 2020 and 2050 emission reduction promises. But I know these assurances are worthless, for the very [...]
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Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by [...]
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From a time-management perspective, I seem to have become a much worse student since my undergrad days. Right now, I am on a computer in my study working on drafts of two papers simultaneously (one due tomorrow, one due Thursday). Occasionally, I am drifting back to the well-lit zone in my bedroom to do the [...]
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Somehow, this coming week is shaping up to be even more insane than the weeks so far this term. I have to grade all the papers from my international relations students by Thursday (after re-reading the papers they are based on), as well as do the reading for this week’s tutorials and teach them on [...]
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Content copyright Milan Ilnyckyj (2003-2013). May be used non-commercially with attribution. For more details see this page.