Daily updates – Page 168 – a sibilant intake of breath

Take-home exam and contemplation of dreams

Morning and early afternoon: reading and writing

I am really enjoying The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. As with most fiction, that is a result of the narrator. You need to see their project as valuable, yet not something you could or would do yourself. As such, they are doing you a service by living in that capacity in your stead. You get the results back in neat lines on pages. In good fiction, those results feel a lot like memory. They get overlaid upon your own memory, as though you had thought those things yourself in moments similar to the ones portrayed.

I have been dreaming copiously of late. I can set the countdown timer on my phone for ten minutes, lie down, and dream something – even in the middle of the day. Sleeping for an hour or to, I might have a half dozen dreams: all of which I can remember for a minute or two afterwards, but none that I will remember an hour later. I don’t know if this is just a meaningless phenomenon or whether it represents some kind of ongoing psychological condition. It’s certainly not something that’s normal for me.

It’s nice to imagine that my brain is doing some kind of internal housekeeping or reorganization and, as such, sleeping is not a waste of time. Rather, it will allow me – very soon now – to come at all problems with a piercing new intelligence and command of language and memory.

I read a few chapters of Murakami’s book between reading and writing pages for my take-home test. It’s hard to evaluate the Inuit Circumpolar Conference from the perspective of the principal-agent framework. Firstly, that’s because there isn’t actually a lot of information out there about it. Secondly, the framework seems better suited to institutions with a more defined structure. That said, understanding the ICC is important – for a number of reasons I identify in the latest draft – and it’s probably at least a bit important to understand the extent to which this framework works for it. That makes writing the exam much less of a chore.

During all of this, I listened to Tegan & Sara.

Late afternoon and evening

I met Louise at the train station and spent a while with her getting coffee and then groceries before she went off for dinner with friends and German backpackers and I returned to Wadham to carry on working on my take home exam. Getting it done completely tonight, or even just to the point where it requires only final linguistic and conceptual editing, would liberate tomorrow – a benefit that is not to be sneered at.

I will, after all, have another week’s reading to do for Tuesday and Thursday, as well as writing a manifesto for the Security Studies Group election. Next’s week’s general topic is international society and international law, and the specific question which to which I must prepare and answer is:

What is meant by the concept of international society? In what ways does it represent a challenge to realism?

Thankfully, this is something that I already know at least a bit about. Coming up next in qualitative methods: “Archives, Texts, and Sources,” beginning with “Bonapartism and popular political culture.”

Academic Hiccough

Today’s supervision really didn’t feel as though it went well. While some of the discussion had the kind of energy that has been characteristic, there was also a lot of vague sparring and misunderstanding. I don’t know exactly why this was the case, but I suspect my essay was of lower quality than normal. That’s partly because the question was so large and, when I picked and chose elements to address, I didn’t really explain why adequately. As such, it was open to all sorts of attack. I will do better next time. Next time, I really should make an effort to have someone else at least glance over my paper, before I produce the final version. Thoughts that never get interrogated risk being really flabby the first time someone does; if that happens in supervision, it reflects really badly.

Despite sleeping quite a lot in the past few days, I remain frequently and thoroughly tired. I don’t really have an explanation for it, but it’s very bad for overall productivity. It may well have something to do with my continued failure to establish anything like the five-track ideal life: one in which you always have five different things happening at once, in different areas. When that’s happening, it’s hard for everything to go wrong at once. It is also hard to get caught up in general listlessness. The ginseng that Jonathan suggested I try does not seem to be helping.

At Robert Wood’s suggestion, I am going to read Daniel L Nielson and Michael J Tierney, Delegation to International Organizations: Agency Theory and World Bank Environmental Reform, International Organization 57 (Spring 2003): 241-276. Hopefully, it will be useful for helping me to answer, in 2000 words, the question of the take-home assignment:

Is the principal-agent framework useful for understanding international institutions? Using the example of a specific institution [Ed: The Inuit Circumpolar Conference] outline the strengths and weaknesses of this approach to studying international institutions.

It’s not the easiest case study to deal with, but I chose it before I knew what the question would be. The principals are presumably the 150,000 or so Inuit people in Canada, the United States, Greenland, and Russia. As for how power is delegated to agents, I don’t know all that much. A group that represents so few people doesn’t generally have an extensive literature around it, and certainly not one that is accessible from so far away. Basically, I am going to talk about it as a stakeholder group that shows how organizations aside from states – and not even composed of states – can play a role in global environmental policy negotiations. There are all manner of conclusions that can be drawn from the Stockholm episode.

I was listening to Elliot Smith’s album Figure 8 today. Some of it is very good, but it suffers from being too similar to the stuff that isn’t overly good. It all blends together on the basis of the very similar nature of most of their songs, not unlike The Smiths.
Apparently, they just found a new tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. The first such find since 1922. It will be nice to have one more properly excavated: presumably with artifacts to remain in Egypt. (Source: BBC)

Nothing too interesting today, I’m afraid

I was quite exhausted today, as the result of first voluntary and then involuntary sleeplessness last night. My plan to get back on my ideal 1am-9am sleep pattern is not going well. I had some really good conversations with a pair of people with whom I’ve not generally conversed at length, but the cost was one of considerable mental degradation today. As such, our second qualitative methods class passed rather more hazily than it might otherwise have done. Even so, I think I will be able to do a decent job of the take-home exam over the course of this weekend. Since it’s just one 2000 word essay, it shouldn’t be too bad. Unfortunately, the essay question is one that is uniquely poorly suited to the case study I have already chosen. It’s really aimed at larger and more bureaucratically complex institutions. That said, I think a reminder that there are frigates out there as well as battleships – and that they are doing important work – is one that will serve those marking the exam well.

Lots of projects are waiting just over the next hill now: the continued search for a summer job and a place to live, the process of applying for scholarships in a way that I hope will be more fruitful this year than last, and the ever-present process of reading with an eye to less-and-less distant examinations. The character of the light has been helpful on all of these fronts lately. It really does have a profound psychological effect. It’s like seeing the surface of the water as you are swimming up towards it. It distracts from how oxygen starved your lungs can get at times and it unambiguously demonstrates the way to go.

I have a supervision with Dr. Hurrell tomorrow about my neoliberal institutionalism essay, with another to follow soon on the democratic peace essay I submitted yesterday.

To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn

This afternoon was so bright that – sitting with my curtains open in Library Court – I felt like I was back on the red couch in our kitchen this summer, or perhaps at one of the bare wooden picnic tables in Fairview Crescent during exam time. Unable to resist the aesthetic, I spent a while reading the Murakami book from Tristan. Most recently, the protagonist has intentionally lowered himself down into the bottom of a well, in the middle of a Tokyo suburb. The light of the afternoon and the ideal of the story both remind me of stealth camping expeditions planned and executed in Pacific Spirit Park: concealing a small tent somewhere amongst all the foot and bicycle paths, then watching it get dark absurdly early under the heavy coniferous canopy.

My computer monitor – usually the bluest light source in the room by far, contrasted with cheap incandescent bulbs under yellowed plastic covers – looked positively sepia toned, by comparison with the afternoon skylight.

Camera trouble

Something very annoying has happened to my Canon A510 – the camera on which all the blog photos are taken. In the bottom left area of the frame, when the camera is held horizontally, there is a dark splotch. At first, I thought it was dust on the lens, but a thorough cleaning hasn’t even moved it. It seems to become larger when focused on a distant subject and darker when a smaller aperture is used. My thesis, for the moment, is that it is dust on the sensor. As such, there is no way whatsoever I could remove it, and to have it done professionally would probably cost a good share of the value of the camera. Since it wasn’t there yesterday, I can hold out the dimmest hope that it won’t be there tomorrow. That said, it looks as though I will be trying to remove it in Photoshop from all photos where it is evident (anything where it appears on a solid colour or even a simple texture). If anyone has a cunning plan to get rid of it completely, I would be highly grateful.

There is a second, smaller and less noticeable, patch in the upper right corner. A third, even less noticeable, one is right in the middle. All three have been edited out of today’s photo.

[Update: 31 May 2006] Whatever the splotches are, they seem to have been growing steadily in visibility. Since cleaning the sensor seems to be impossible, I will just have to put up with the problem until I get a new camera. Care to help?

Mid-term craziness

I wrote another essay today. Taking an hour-long nap during the process probably increased the quality of the final product, but it has not advanced my particularly daunting schedule for the next few days. Nearly adding boiling water to milk in an attempt to make breakfast cereal for dinner revealed both the state of culinary achievement I have reached of late and how addled you mind can become on the basis of sleeplessness and long bouts of reading.¹

Now, I just need to proofread this paper (on democratic peace theory) before delivering it to Nuffield tomorrow. Since I am running for an executive position, I should probably attend tonight’s Strategic Studies Group meeting. Then, I need to finish my presentation on the Inuit Circumpolar Council for Thursday. The weekend promises to include the take-home exam for qualitative methods. In addition to that, there is always reading for next week’s core seminar. Of particular importance is that I need to collect information on the two scholarships I am applying for in early March and send it to referees. Also, submit my request for vacation residence time as soon as I know when the trip with my mother will be. They certainly keep us on our toes here: always something new to be done, even if there isn’t necessarily much time for reflection or creativity.

I’m particularly irked by the knowledge that I will need to spend a good chunk of this weekend dealing with the take-home exam. There is a mess of reading for the institutions section of that course that I will probably need to do in order to do a good job of the exam, whatever form it ends up taking. The annoying thing is the confluence of the three days during which the exam absolutely must be done and Louise’s visit. I shall try to balance them as best can be managed.

[1] I got a much better dinner after the strategic studies meeting.

Apparently, the provincial government has released a plan to protect 2 million hectares of the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia. Good for them. I wonder if this area is connected with the bear research Kate Dillon has been doing. This will be an expansion of the 45,000-hectare protected zone in the Khutzeymateen Valley.
This New Yorker article on profiling, to which Bryony originally referred me, is quite interesting. As you would expect from Malcolm Gladwell, it includes connections between quite disparate areas of study. Since I can’t write any more here now, people looking for something to read should definitely have a look at this.

Amateur Oxford sociology

Happy birthday Iason Gabriel

After lectures this morning, I spent much of the day working on the Connolly and Barkawi books. The Connolly book is interesting, but includes a lot of fairly general language and not a lot of direct examples. General points about theory are more memorable, comprehensible, and valid when they can be affirmed through at least one concrete demonstration. You can talk about symbol construction all you want, but one good case study on the construction of ‘Palestine’ as a symbol in contemporary Middle Eastern politics strikes me as quite a bit more worthwhile and useful than a lot of generalization. It’s an anti-parsimonious ideal that may set me outside the ‘discipline’ of International Relations: out amongst the historians, journalists, and policy makers.

Dinner with Alex, Claire, and Iason tonight was an affirmation – once again – of how fun people in my program are. I was meant to meet Emily afterwards, but things once again didn’t manage to work out. It’s interesting to observe the sociology of the M.Phil group: who spends time with whom, what kind of inside jokes develop, and how people conceive of themselves in the program. Personally and intellectually, I feel like I am undergoing a second adolescence here. I am very actively defining my beliefs and personality in a way I can never recall doing before. I think it’s the combination of a new place and having finally reached a level of self-affirmation where I can brush off most criticism. It’s an empowering mix.

Hopefully, it will empower me to get a decent draft of my paper for Dr. Hurrell done tonight – after a brief foray to the King’s Arms with Alex, Claire, and some of Claire’s St. Cross friends. I could write much more, but I really should get some reading done now if I am going out again later.

PS. Tristan has a new batch of photos online, including a really odd one of Meaghan Beattie and I. Tristan frequently seems to post more photos of people in a day than I do in several months. Partly, that’s because there have been problems in the past with posting photos of people on the blog. Even so, I will try to show a less de-populated Oxford during the next while.

On travel, a new project, and thesis planning

Speaking with my parents over Skype today, I was reminded of how difficult it can be to communicate through a speech-only medium. It’s especially frustrating when you are making the attempt with someone who you really do want to speak with, but you are having difficulty doing so with any clarity or skill. The extra fraction of a second of Skype-to-phone lag definitely contributes to the difficulty. So plainly, in fact, that when I use SkypeOut to call people, they frequently suggest going on Skype themselves so as to increase the quality of the connection.

Partly for these reasons, I am especially looking forward to seeing my mother in about a month’s time. It’s still not certain whether we will go to Malta, Portugal, or Greece – though the middle option is increasingly looking the most likely. The kind of trip that is being proposed is a package-deal type hiking trip, with 4-10km walks every day and arranged hotels. While quite different from the kind of travel I have generally done, I find the idea to be an interesting one, and one that is likely to be enjoyable. I found travelling with Meghan Mathieson et al to be especially interesting, precisely because it involved traveling in a group and according to a set itinerary that I didn’t control. Hopefully, this expedition will mimic the best attributes of that one.

Oxford life

At the end of this year, I think I should condense the mass of experience I’ve had here into a trio of short guides: one for people considering coming to Oxford, one for people considering Wadham, and one for people thinking of doing the M.Phil in IR. It would offer me a chance to be both balanced and concise, while offering a perspective that people may find valuable. While the information that would be included is already embedded in blog posts, I don’t think anyone is likely to go through the whole collection of hundreds of entries just to gain insights that might be better expressed in three to five pages on each topic.

Thesis planning

I have been investigating the Oxford Environmental Change Institute and it seems like a resource that could conceivably be extremely helpful for my research topic. Their website quotes Dr. Anna Lawrence, of the Human Ecology Program, as saying: “Researchers must find ways to incorporate the experiences and values of other stakeholders in their research.” This is exactly the kind of thing I want to do: look at the means by which such cooperation and outreach is taking place. If I can find some way to get involved with this organization, it might contribute a great deal to my ability to say something new and important on the subject. While it can be difficult to deal with segregation between different areas of academia, the very lack of connections makes it a really exciting place to do work. There is much to be discovered there.

For space travel enthusiasts, someone put a link on the blog today to a really comprehensive and interesting site about the Soviet and Russian space program. The information on launch centres strikes me as particularly interesting.
The Google Maps images for a number of places have been updated at higher resolution. You can easily see individual people on the Millennium Footbridge between the Tate Modern and St. Paul’s. You can see the face of Big Ben. Oxford looks almost purposefully blurred compared to things around it. Lancaster is as clear as London.
It says something about Oxford – and perhaps about political science students – that there are at least six other people in the Department at 10:30pm on Sunday night.

And so, the weekend arrives

Happy birthday Gleider Hernandez

I received my examination entry form for the qualifying test today. The page itself is quite cryptic, with boxes containing random looking letter and number strings and no instructions for its completion. I will figure the thing out by Tuesday, when it’s due. I am less worried about the qualifying test before Trinity term now that we’ve had back the results from our quantitative methods course. While I know the upcoming test will cover dramatically more material, I also feel as though I will probably be better prepared for it.

After reading about democratic peace theory for much of today, I went to Jericho with a large group of people from the college to celebrate Gleider’s birthday. It was a good group and a fun few hours. I should probably resist the temptation to do anything lengthy and social tonight. Between the paper due on Wednesday, readings for Tuesday, and the take-home exam being distributed on Thursday, I need to stay on top of things.

Seventeen days until the equinox

During our qualitative methods class today, on institutions, Dr. Ngaire Woods made an excellent point. Each of us has a year to become an expert on a particular subject. There are hardly any people in the entire world who ever have the chance to devote such time and attention to an issue and there is a good chance that, at the end, we will know more about our subject than anyone in the world. This underscores both the importance of choosing a topic well and of really committing yourself to writing something excellent. Producing something that will be read by people beyond the examination committee and people kind enough to edit it for me would also be a big advantage.

The institutions section of the qualitative methods course is much better than the scattershot attempt at foreign policy analysis that came before it. That is welcome, especially since I have a take-home exam to write on the course between the 9th and 13th of this month – most inconvenient timing. Hopefully, I will be able to get the thing mostly done next Friday, leaving the weekend relatively unencumbered.

After class, this afternoon, I had coffee with Claire, Josiah, and another of her St. Cross friends who I am embarassed to be unable to remember the name of. Followed that closely was tea with Joelle Faulkner. We tried the Tieguanyin tea that Neal sent. It’s more subtle than I expected, though not nearly so much so as the Jamine Pearl tea that Kate once gave me. I am going to try making it with bottled water, in the knowledge that the amount of dissolved minerals in Oxford tap water is quite substantial.

Hopefully, tomorrow I will be able to finish most of Tarak Barkawi and Mark Laffer’s Democracy, Liberalism, and War, William Connolly’s The Terms of Political Discourse, and what remains of this week’s readings on institutions. I have a paper due for Dr. Hurrell on Wednesday, evaluating the democratic peace theory. I will also have a new issue of The Economist upon which to complete a preliminary read.

I’ve now finished the first book of The Wind up Bird Chronicle and perhaps the first tenth of Democracy in America. I don’t know if it’s an overly self-serving thing to believe, but I don’t think that any kind of reading is irrelevant or a distraction. While there are certainly things that it is more urgent for me to read, to neglect other areas of interest would ultimately be counterproductive and unwise. Neither American democracy nor Japanese literature are even distantly divorced from the question of democratic peace, and good writing is never irrelevant.

25 things I am:Canoeist, geek, webmaster, environmentalist, caucasian,
student, heterosexual, reader, writer, photographer,
Czech, Ukranian, atheist, Oxfordian, skeptic,
liberal, vegetarian, single, Canadian, hiker,
bilingual, healthy, rich, educated, male.

Day spent examining strings of 26 different shapes, along with gaps and dots

I am feeling increasingly as though journalism will be the thing to do once I finish my M.Phil. I want to travel and one of the things that I am fairly good at is writing: especially the kind of writing that must be done quickly and consistently. I am fairly sure that I would be able to get a job in the field, even though I know nothing of its inner workings, and it may serve many of the purposes that I have for myself in the coming years. There is only so much, after all, that can be learned from books. Academia is, in general, somewhat terrified of talking to people – a fear that I have grown to share, outside the narrow confines of fellow students and other members of a close cabal. Even where we deal with outsiders, it’s behind the bulletproof glass of case studies and surveys, interviews with pre-selected questions vetted by ethics committees. My perception of the greater authenticity of journalism is a draw, even if journalistic thought and action is not immune from other forms of criticism.

This is not a thing that I see myself as doing indefinitely. It’s something I would want to do in a roving fashion: out seeing things rather than sitting behind a desk in Manhattan. I don’t think it would be sustainable over the long term, but I do think it would be a really effective counterpoint to what I have done so far. Perhaps it would also be a good lead-up into whatever is to come after.

Talking with Tristan and Meaghan Beattie tonight was really good. One of the oddest things about living in Oxford is my near-total lack of people with whom I have substantive, personal conversations. The closest it comes is discussion of the M.Phil program. It’s something that will come with time, I hope….

I learned today that, since the tour she is going on may already be entirely booked, I may not be going to Greece or Malta after all. That said, the possibility remains and I will have to wait and see. I very much hope it will come together.

…

Scheduling conflicts continue to plague the mooted bloggers’ gathering.