Oxford – Page 46 – a sibilant intake of breath

Mihi Cura Futuri?

We had our first qualitative methods seminar today, and I am of a mixed opinion about it. 28 people in a lecture hall does not make for a very effective seminar format. Likewise, the discussion was unfocused and struck me more as messily attempting to identify the relevant issues, rather than dealing with them directly. With only two weeks to cover foreign policy analysis, perhaps it is inevitable that the coverage will not be comprehensive.

Part of the problem, I think, has to do with the limitations of the whole broad discipline of ‘international relations.’ We are in the business of quick and dirty answers. That’s fine, really, since we’re rarely interested in capital T truth. All international relations is done for a purpose – whether explicitly normative or not – and most of it relates to questions of a kind where a rigorous conception of truth simply doesn’t apply. Either our conclusions are so vague as to be untestable or our answer is only one of many potentially valid ones. For me, most of these apparent problems evaporate once you adopt an explicitly normative agenda. It doesn’t matter where the boundary between foreign policy analysis and international relations lies (if it even exists). Rather, we can pick and choose whatever tools are helpful for advancing an agenda. This strikes me as fundamentally more honest, and obviously less frustrating.

During the lecture, I also found myself thinking worriedly about exactly what I am going to do with all of this. The lack of a summer job and housing for next year is uncertainty enough for me, but that’s just peanuts compared to the big question of “What next?” Once I become Milan Ilnyckyj, M.Phil (Oxford), what am I going to do with myself? Going straight into a PhD seems unwise. It would be better to see a bit more of the world before making such a commitment. Working at something relevant and interesting, while writing, has a lot of appeal, but I really have no idea of how to bring it about.

Hilary Term Outline

15 Jan 06: Term begins
20 Jan 06: ORS application due
24 Jan 06: First paper for Andrew Hurrell due
31 Jan 06: First core seminar paper due
07 Feb 06: First qualitative methods take home exam
28 Feb 06: Second core seminar paper due
01 Mar 06: Two more scholarship applications due
07 Mar 06: Second qualitative methods take home examIndeterminate dates: 3-4 other papers for Andrew Hurrell
List subject to later additions

I paid another tranche of my Oxford fees today. I am now paid up for Hilary term: as far as battels, college fees, and university fees go. I will keep paying for all my groceries and as many other expenses as possible on my Canadian credit card, but it will definitely be necessary to make another expensive and time consuming bank transfer in order to pay next term’s fees. Then, I will be halfway done paying for the whole Oxford experience.

I think that Emily and others are right in thinking that the best job for me that is within reach has to do with either writing or editing. That said, I know nothing about the industry. I suppose I had better learn, if I don’t want to end up working in a computer shop or a pub this summer…

Apologies to those who read the Atom feed, but I had to switch it from full syndication to just snippets. The reason for this is that other pages keep grabbing my content and then using it to drive their own advertising. If I am going to pay for this URL and hosting this content, without even enabling advertising on this site, I definitely don’t want other people profiting off of it.
Many kudos to Google for not turning over their search records to the DOJ. If you’re serious about the commitment to “not be evil,” this is just the sort of thing you need to do. Not to mention, if you want to maintain the trust of thousands of people storing huge amounts of email with you (including most members of the Oxford M.Phil in IR program).
Here’s a question for my wise and tactful readers: my supervisor hasn’t been explicitly told about my blog. While the simplest of Google searches yields it immediately, the fact remains that he has been mentioned in it a number of times without necessarily knowing about it. Nothing personal, of course, but it’s still there. The question, therefore, is whether I should tell him directly. The relationship is an entirely professional and academic one, that hasn’t taken on any kind of extensive personal dimension. Otherwise, I would have probably told him long ago. No appropriate chance has arisen. Who can advise may speak.

Academic and non-academic reading

Ten January nectarines, a pound of red peppers, garlic, cherry tomatoes, and ginger: at Emily’s suggestion, I went to the Wednesday Market in Gloucester Green today. As I’ve said before, ‘green’ is a definite misnomer. That said, to get a sack of fruit and veggies for £5 makes for a nice contrast with Sainsbury’s.

Aside from reading, not a great deal happened today. In a productive piece of procrastination, I read Around the World in 80 Days. I hadn’t not read it before, but only heard parts of it read aloud during one of my family’s traditional trips down the Oregon Coast (on which both Jonathan Morissette and Kate Dillon accompanied me more than once). While rapidly digestible, it’s certainly not the most complex of novels: fuelled more, perhaps, on national stereotypes and an early anticipation of the consequences of globalization than on solid characterization or description. Verne’s frequent misunderstanding about knots – thinking them a unit of distance, rather than velocity – is particularly irksome, despite being only a very minor point. A steamer that goes “eight and nine knots the hour” would be going very fast indeed after a few days. Reading it after the demise of the British Empire, one cannot help being struck by a tinge of collective nostalgia. Collective because the British Empire is something I’ve only experienced by distillation, and by virtue of being Canadian.

Tomorrow, we have our first qualitative methods class. The three focuses are foreign policy analysis, interviewing, and archival research. All strike me as things likely to be useful.

No sign yet of the form I need for formally request exemption from future college meals. I will make a third request for one tomorrow morning.
Hardly anyone from Oxford is on my MSN contact list. If you want to be, send me an email, find my MSN username from my Facebook profile, or contact me by some other means. I am also on AIM and Skype.
Everyone back home is fixated on the new series of 24. I rather liked the first series, watching the whole thing twice, but found the second ridiculously implausible, in terms of politics. That said, their energetic accounts make me envious of those with television access: a very unusual feeling for me.
At times, we must all curse how there are no university run wireless networks in Oxford. The DPIR IT people tell us it’s because the colleges can’t agree how to do it: an explanation I believe, even as I find it frustrating. The iBook would certainly wander farther from my desk if it could talk to other machines from elsewhere. This is part of why Oxford’s continued devotion to old ideas and old rivalries will sink it in comparison to American schools in the next few decades, unless things change a great deal.
Seth’s blog directed me to a community of LiveJournal users all trying to get into Oxford. Take a look, if it interests you.

Real academic work has resumed

Lectures

Unfortunately, I missed the first Philosophy of the Social Sciences lecture today, because I didn’t know when it was happening. I learned when Marga Lyall sent me an email: 3/4 of the way through the lecture and I was busily writing up presentation notes on neorealism. It seems that most of the other M.Phils missed it as well, so I am not overly worried. It’s also a supplemental, rather than examined, piece of coursework – though it is mandatory.

The first core seminar went extremely well. Both Jennifer Welsh and the talkative David Williams provided good direction for what proved to be a very interesting discussion. The seminar opened with a brief discussion of what theory is and should be. I think it would have benefitted significantly from the presence of a philosopher or two, especially when questions about the nature of knowledge and science arose.

Somewhat uncharacteristically, I volunteered to present, as I felt myself to have a fairly strong grasp of the topic. It’s always nice to get these things out of the way, even when they are not explicitly for marks. My general sense afterwards is that the presentation went quite well, though the importance of them doesn’t extend too far beyond offering some starting point for discussion.

Strategic Studies Group

Tonight, there was a presentation on Saudi Arabia being made to the Oxford Strategic Studies Group (OUSSG) at All Souls. I attended along with Claire and Madgdy. The speaker was Colonel (Ret) Brian Lees and he spoke for about an hour about the various characteristics of the Saudi Kingdom: geographic, political, strategic, etc. It was an interesting summary, not dissimilar in overall content from the survey recently printed in The Economist, though notably more favourable towards the Saudi Royal Family.

Apparently, three positions have opened up on the executive committee of the OUSSG. Since I don’t have any experience with the group, the sensible position to aim for would be that of secretary. Consider this a formal declaration of candidacy. Since it is basically a communication and paperwork position, it seems an intelligent starting point for an outsider: as well as something relatively unlikely to be hotly contested. I spent about an hour after the talk and subsequent questions talking in The Turf with the current President, Secretary, Webmaster, and a number of members. They seem an interesting group and this seems a good way to expand my range of Oxford activities, as I have expressed the intent to do in previous posts. At ten Pounds for membership, it’s enormously more reasonably priced than the Union.

Later in the year, there is also a highly subsidized expedition to Brussels to see the European Parliament and NATO headquarters. It’s happening during the next inter-term break and it seems entirely sensible to part with three days of revision time and one hundred Pounds or so for such an opportunity.

Miscellaneous

With Philosophy of the Social Sciences lectures from 10:00 to 11:00, the core seminar from 11:00 to 1:00, the Changing Character of War series from 1:00 to 2:30, and Professional Training in the Social Sciences from 5:30 until 7:30, Tuesdays this term look as though they will be fairly hectic and good for displacing meals to awkward times.

This afternoon, I made a second written request for the form I need in order to make a written request to opt out of all future meals in college. Along with having NatWest make another bank draft and finishing the ORS application, I am well stocked with paperwork. As I’ve said before, completing a scholarship application we’ve been told that we have virtually no chance of winning is frustrating.

After much urging from Jessica, I’ve abandoned the buggy Mac version of MSN Messenger for the open source client Adium. It looks as though it will take some tweaking before it is working the way I want it to, but the general wisdom of avoiding Microsoft products (especially where the internet is concerned) is enough to make me stick with it, at least for now. The existence of an optional Hobbes (the tiger, not the philosopher) Dock icon is also a selling point. The default duck icon is just hideous. There is something rather nice about being able to use one relatively elegant program to access a diverse range of IM services, though I am only using it for MSN and AIM at the moment.

Apple has responded to the many people who complained about a spyware feature in the new version of iTunes. You are now able to decline installation of the component in question: an iTunes ‘Ministore’ to which information about any song you clicked on was sent. This goes to show both that some companies listen to their customers and that it isn’t so hard to address customer complaints after the fact. Well done Apple.

“Nothing is more deceitful,” said Darcy, “than the appearance of humility.”

Realism and neorealism

With a litre of dark coffee beside me and tables heaped with books, I can tell that the term has begun. During my core seminar tomorrow morning, there’s a one in seven chance that I will need to present for fifteen minutes on the differences between realism and neorealism. One approach, I suppose, would be to take Waltz’s conception of ‘thought’ as compared to ‘theory’ and build a presentation out of examining it. By a lucky coincidence, I have a copy of a take home exam for Robert Crawford’s international relations theory course written on that precise topic. You can get a sense of Crawford’s hostility to Waltz from the question itself:

In an obviously self-serving argument, Kenneth Waltz distinguishes between “thought” and “theory” in international relations. What is the basis for this distinction, and to what extent does it further, or undermine, the pursuit of knowledge in world politics?

I don’t know anything about David Williams, but I am pretty sure Jennifer Welsh is no neorealist. Come to think of it, she probably knows Robert Crawford.

I am decreasingly of the opinion that Waltz is ‘wrong’ in the sense normally applied to the word. It’s more that he has quite an unusual project. Waltz identifies theory as “a means of dealing with complexity” and goes on to say that “in making assumptions about men’s (or states’) motivations, the world must be drastically simplified; subtleties must be rudely pushed aside, and reality must be grossly distorted.” What he is doing is fundamentally more artificial than a straightforward attempt at getting a sense of how world politics works and how we might hope to change it. Indeed, that kind of unstructured approach is exactly what Waltz would categorize as “mere thought.” Hoffman says that: “Waltz’s own attempt at laying the groundwork for theory is conceptually so rigorous as to leave out much of the reality which he wants to account for.”

The danger arises when Waltz makes the same move as many sleazy economists. They build theories strongly abstracted from reality (high school dropouts have perfect understanding of the advanced mathematics involved in generating net present values, and other ludicrous assumptions) in the hope of developing a parsimonious explanation of a good part of the phenomena being observed. The devious step is when they come to love their models too well and carry on, by sheer momentum, applying them in situations where their own assumptions make them entirely invalid. Especially when making normative judgements or advocating policy, all those bits of real-world complexity that were deliberately forgotten need to be considered again. Likewise, there is the need for an awareness of how theory itself impacts the world. Otherwise, theory becomes nothing more than “an anti-political apology for brute force and cynicism” as Kalevi Holsti pointedly described neorealism.

Given the passions that tend to get inflamed both within supporters and opponents of neorealism when the subject gets debated, tomorrow’s seminar promises to be an interesting discussion. Indeed, among IR scholars, the position you take with regards to IR theory is one that goes a long way towards defining your personal and intellectual identity. As Robert Walker identified in 1986, theory is never a neutral thing: “Theory is always for someone, for some group, for some purpose.”

In the end, I would contend that ideas pertaining to vital questions about world politics are necessarily ‘thought’ as opposed to ‘theory’ as defined by Waltz. While he would probably agree, using the cover that theory can never be comprehensive, I don’t think that’s an adequate response: at least not if people are going to go around identifying themselves as neorealists. If neorealism is a partial explanation, it cannot comprise our whole intellectual outlook.

Richard Dawkins

Apparently, on Monday February 13th, there will be a lecture in London presented by Richard Dawkins. It’s entitled: “Darwin’s meme: or the origin of culture by means of natural selection” and I would be interested in going if I can find at least one other person who would also be so inclined. It is happening at the Darwin Lecture Theatre, Darwin Building, UCL, Gower Street, London at 6:30pm.

On a related note, Louise apparently knows Professor Dawkins’ daughter Juliet. Regrettably, I did not get the chance to meet either her or her father before Louise made the journey back to Lancaster. Along with Philip Pullman, Richard Dawkins is probably the Oxford resident who I would most like to meet.

To do in the next few days:

Prepare realism v. neorealism presentation (ASAP)
Opt out of another term of college meals in hall (ASAP)
Merifield application (Wednesday)
Complete ORS application, submit directly to University Offices (Friday)
Pay Hilary term fees and battels (Friday)

Contemplating the future

The Stardust Mission

One piece of exciting news today is the safe return of the NASA Stardust capsule, after a seven-year mission intended to collect dust from the tail of a comet. If the aerogel-filled compartments are, as expected, saturated with this material, it will be the first time such a thing has ever been collected and it may contribute important information to understanding the early solar system.

This is also the first mission since 1976 to return solid material from an extraterrestrial body: a measure both of diminished interest in the moon and the exceptionally longer distances involved in reaching other planets and asteroids.

Whereas there is a great deal of controversy about the usefulness and safety of manned space travel – especially the Shuttle Program – there are few people who contest the scientific usefulness of robotic exploratory missions. Indeed, there is a very satisfying record in the past few years of improved understanding of cosmic phenomena, both within and outside our solar system.

The really exciting prospect is the possibility of seeing new developments in particle and theoretical physics start to match up better with improved cosmological models. The biggest questions in physics today are probably the questions related to dark matter and energy, the explanation behind the profusion of subatomic particles that have been discovered, and the generation of a theory that is able to deal with the contradictions between quantum mechanics and relativity. While this mission doesn’t necessarily speak directly to any of those goals, it’s part of a process of improved data collection that feeds the development and testing of explanations. It seems likely that interesting times are ahead.

The second term schedule

On Tuesday, the second core seminar begins: Contemporary Debates in International Relations Theory. While the subject matter is inherently somewhat less interesting than the historical analysis of the first and third term, I am excited about the course. Partly, that is because of the instructors: David Williams and Jennifer Welsh. Partly, that is because of my fellow seminar members. If I recall correctly, I am in the same group as Roham, Sheena, Andy Kim, Bryony, Claire, Robert Moore, Emily, Matt Pennycook, Shohei, Alex, and Robert Wood. Collectively, I think this will make for interesting discussions.

Just like last term, I have a one in seven chance of being called upon to give a fifteen minute presentation on one of the week’s two topics. This week, mine would be:

‘For classical realists conflict stems from human nature, while for neo-realists conflict stems from the nature of the international system’. Is this an accurate assessment of the differences between classical and neo-realists?

Thankfully, I have some recollection of Robert Crawford’s IR Theory course at UBC to fall back upon. The sensible approach seems to be to quickly summarize and contrast some of the biggest names in realist theory: E.H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau, and Kenneth Waltz, in particular. Tomorrow, I will be in the SSL formulating some speaking notes.

Aside from the core seminar and qualitative methods, I am not entirely certain what we are meant to be attending this term. I’m not sure if the ‘Advanced Study of IR’ course is persisting into the second term; nor am I certain about whether the ‘Philosophy of the Social Sciences’ course that was delayed in Michaelmas will be happening now. Then there are things like the undergrad IR lecture and the ‘Professional Training in the Social Sciences’ course that were poorly attended and never discussed last term. I am sure it will all become clear in the first week or so, and I can ask Dr. Hurrell about it in our first supervision.

One thing I am scrambling over is the ORS application. For some reason, I thought it was due months from now. As such, I am having a real struggle coming up with two letters of reference before the due date on the 20th. That is particularly true since Dr. Hurrell is not supposed to provide one, since the department will be making the selection of which ORS applicants in the program get passed along to the university. It’s frustrating to have to do all of this for a scholarship we’ve told we have almost no chance of actually receiving. I am personally more hopeful about the Chevening, for which all applications were due in Ottawa today, and a few others that are coming up in the next few months. Suffice it to say that having some funding for next year would be exceedingly welcome.

Housing for next year and a job for the summer

Both at the back of my mind for the whole break, neither of these problems has found a solution yet. I am increasingly inclined to staying in Oxford: partly because of the availability of research materials for my thesis and partly due to the lower cost of living and the correspondingly increased probability that I will be able to find a job that will at least cover them. I would be happiest with a job doing academic research or working as a writer or editor in an academic, journalistic, or publishing context. Anyone with ideas is very much encouraged to contact me.

I have preferences but no possibilities regarding housing as well. I’d like to have a room in a house shared among some of my friends (ideally, at least a few of them members of the M.Phil in IR program). The Jericho and the Cowley Road areas seem to be the desirable ones for students. Jericho is closer to university stuff, but is less of a low-cost residential environment. The existence of the Tesco on Cowley Road could single-handedly account for a somewhat lower cost of living there. As for the building itself, my critical requirements are:

High speed internet access.
Decent security – I really can’t afford to have my laptop stolen
A clean and effective kitchen
Tolerable proximity to classes and services
Affordability

Of course, a big part of the quality of any living arrangement has to do with the people with whom you are living. My thuggish former roommates from my first year in Fairview may be the ultimate example of how bad roommates can ruin a residence experience. While I don’t think I could possibly do that badly again, I’d really like for my first experience in private accommodation to be with people whose company I enjoy. This will be the first time I’ve ever rented a private room. At UBC, at L’Universite de Montreal, and at Oxford, so far, I have always lived in university housing.

I may well apply for a space in Merifield, just so that the option of living there remains open.

The Animal Lab Protest

When I walked across central Oxford to return The Life Aquatic, I found the city suffused with a very heavy police presence, on account of the protest that was held today against the Oxford animal lab. Presumably, that was also the reason for the 10m tall, metal-covered and razorwire-topped fence around the lab construction site itself that I saw yesterday. While it’s always a bit unsettling to see hundreds of police officers, this group was much less intimidating than most I have seen. Firstly, they were all in reflective yellow. While I am sure there were other officers dressed in civilian clothes, it is still much more reassuring to see patrols of twenty yellow-jacketed officers with faces uncovered than the black riot gear clad police forces that I’ve seen in Seattle, Washington D.C., Prague, and elsewhere. Secondly, while in North America they would have been bristling with automatic weapons, here they were visibly armed with nothing more than pepper spray and low-profile batons.

With regards to the cause of the protest itself, I’ve said before that I think it’s a misguided campaign: and not only because of some of the objectionable tactics that have been employed by protesters.

While animals do have some level of moral considerability, that does not automatically preclude the moral legitimacy of animal testing for medical purposes. Obviously, it’s not a thing that should be done lightly or capriciously and efforts should be made to minimize both how much such testing takes place and the level of suffering inflicted in the course of it. For the foreseable future, however, animal testing will be a necessary part of medical research and development. There is a balance that must be struck between the development of things like new medicines and surgical techniques, their thorough testing, and the decent treatment of animals. Already, Britain has in place rigorous protection for laboratory animals. British animal labs are inspected more than ten times a year, usually at unannounced times: much more often than in most countries. 85% of medical experimentation in Britain is conducted on rats and only 2% of all procedures cause “severe pain or distress.”

The Oxford animal lab is also a particularly poor target for public anger, given that it is meant to consolidate existing Oxford labs rather than provide new capacity for animal experimentation. Partly, the move to consolidate has been motivated by the property destruction that has become an unwelcome feature of the protest campaign.

Indeed, that protection extends far, far beyond that extended to the millions of food animals that are slaughtered here annually, as well as elsewhere in the world, to provide for the tables of British consumers. Like other developed countries, Britain has an industrial meat industry that I am certain would shock and appall most consumers if they had a good sense of how it operates. The fact that 75% of American poultry inspectors refuse to eat chicken should be indicative of something. Those concerned with animal welfare should pay greater attention to what they buy and eat, before moving to condemn practices that are necessary for the advancement of important humanitarian goals.

As Spencer pointed out on his blog, The Globe and Mail – bastion newspaper of the centre-left in Canada – has given its endorsement to the Tories. It is looking more and more like we’re headed for a Harper government. This is a prospect I find very worrisome.
Lots of IR people are apparently going to the James Bond bop at St. Antony’s tonight. (Roham is on the poster.) For my part, I feel more like reading, especially after the enormous eight egg veggie omelet I cooked and ate with Nora.
Neal is leaving China tomorrow. I wish him a safe journey back to Vancouver.
Going to http://photo.sindark.com/ automatically forwards you to my Photo.net page: where I post my more successful attempts at photography.
This FAQ for Canon EOS cameras has some really good information in it, presented in an accessible manner.

Hilary term (unofficially) begins

Today was a microcosm of the whole Oxford experience. I saw Louise off in the morning, then spent a few hours preparing for a statistics exam that was much harder than I anticipated. It included a lot of the kind of math that would be fine with a few practice homework assignments but is daunting to see for the first time during an examination. Likewise, the analysis portion expected an awful lot: given that the marks balance indicates you should spend 45 minutes on it. That said, it’s behind me now and I am reasonably sure I got the 53.8% that I need to pass the course.

Afterwards, a whole swarm of IR M.Phil students descended on The Turf. Spending an hour or so with them reminded me about all the best thing Oxford offers: namely the company of excellent peers. I know I’ve praised the cooperative spirit of this group before, but it’s a make-or-break issue for me. Along with my name on some distant piece of paper, I am working for the respect of these people, and partly because I feel like I am engaged in a cooperative enterprise with them. I am honoured to be part of such a group.

In my pigeon hole today were letters to Mr. Ilaycky (from the Wadham Hall Manager) and Mr. Iinyckyi (from the Graduate Studies Office).¹ The first was about my ongoing attempt to opt out of all college meals. The second was my first term official evaluation from Dr. Hurrell. In the spirit of transparency, I reproduce it below:

Milan appears to be settling in very well both to Oxford and to the course. We have had four substantive meetings this term and he has written papers on US foreign policy, WWI, the Middle East, and China. The papers have been very well prepared and based on a good range of reading. We have discussed some of the ways in which he might revise his essay-writing. But, overall, he is a very strong student and this has been an excellent start to the M.Phil.

Nothing too colourful, but it’s good to know that I am working at approximately the right level. The real test comes once I need to start producing original research. Claire, Alex, and I discussed thesis titles while at The Turf tonight. My idea: “Overspecialize and you Breed in Weakness: Fostering Communication Between Epistemic Communities Related to World Fisheries.” It’s a work in progress.

While it feels more than a bit audacious, perhaps I should record my impressions of Dr. Hurrell, just to balance out the record. My conversations with him have been engaging – so much so that I frequently walk out of them feeling really energized and convinced that important and original things can be done here. I appreciate the way our dialogue seems to allow each to feed off the other: a process of conceptual exploration that uses the essay I wrote as a starting point, rather than the singular focus of discussion. Again, the real test will come with the more personal work next year.

Tonight, there is an MCR welcome back party in Wadham. I’ve also been invited to meet up with a group of the M.Phil people. It’s an invitation I feel inclined to accept. Ultimately, the people are a lot more important than having finished an extra couple of hours of reading. Indeed, it is largely my relationships with people in the program that constitute the motivation to do as well as I can.

No end of post errata tonight.

[1] It’s spelled Ilnyckyj. Nobody would ever try to spell it from memory, so all my problems arise from people who try to correct the spelling because it looks overly insane to them. Fair enough, but that’s how it’s spelled.Oh, one thing: walking to the exam today, I saw that a really serious, almost Israeli-security-barrier class wall has been erected around the construction site for the animal lab. While I won’t get into the ethics and politics of animal testing right now, I think the protesters are really missing the point.

I never quite got the hang of Thursdays

With the first inter-term break nearly complete, I have finished one sixth of my total academic time in Oxford. I think this is now the longest I have ever spent without being in Vancouver. While I am still profoundly uncertain about what I will do this summer, it is still comforting to have the overall shape of the next two years laid out before me. I think I’ve done fairly well this term, on a number of fronts, though it will be nice to get my official assessment from Dr. Hurrell, just to see what he thinks in formal terms.

This afternoon, I successfully reprovisioned myself with peppers, free range eggs, lots of kidney beans, cheese, etc. It seemed a good thing to do before the term started, though carrying home £25 worth of groceries (much of it canned) is an activity even less pleasant than revising for tomorrow’s statistics exam.

This weekend, I need to complete the first week’s reading for the core seminar, as well as get a good start on the first week’s reading for the qualitative methods course that is happening this term. Happily, some of the books for the core seminar are also reading my supervisor assigned to me for the break. Due to the mass of reading that remains to be done once the stats exam is dispatched, I should have the most profound hesitance about going to the MCR welcome back party tomorrow night.

I never did get my hands on one of the statistics textbooks, though I suppose there is an outside shot of having the chance to peruse one tomorrow morning, before the exam but after I see Louise off on her return to Lancaster. I am very thankful overall for the statistics courses I took at UBC: especially the statistics for pharmacy students course I took with Alan Donald. Like Farshid Safi (with whom I did differential calculus at UBC), he is a very funny guy and a professor who I highly recommend on the basis of helpfulness, competence, and personality.

I am not entirely certain whether this is a formal Oxford exam, in the sense that I need to wear the whole silly robe and bow tie combination. It’s not happening in the Examination Schools, but it still seems safest to wear the whole ensemble, just in case. I borrowed a graduate robe from the lodge, for this purpose.

Another Mac OS X tip: spend $20 and get yourself an Optical Wheelmouse or the Logitech equivalent. It is infinitely more pleasant to use for long periods than a trackpad or single button Apple mouse. I recommend setting it up so that pressing the third mouse button (the wheel) has the same effect as pressing F9 in the normal setup of Entourage: showing all windows simultaneously. I wish I had a fourth button to map to the F11 equivalent.
Guinness contains 260 calories a pint.
If anyone I know in Oxford wants to borrow The Life Aquatic, they are welcome to do so. A quirky and extremely funny film, I recommend it to people who enjoy slightly absurd comedy. It needs to be returned to the County Library by Saturday, however.
Is anyone else disappointed about EU standardized passport stamps? My child’s passport from when I first went to Europe was much more interesting looking than my monotonously stamped current one.
Just to remind people, the deadline for ORS scholarship applications is January 20th, and you cannot apply for any other university or departmental scholarships unless you apply for this one as well.
On heavily caffeinated days, like the last two, I find myself enormously more likely to be startled by unexpected events: such as suddenly seeing someone enter the room, or turning the corner in a hallway to see someone close to me. The fact that I had something of a reputation for shocked responses to such stimuli when I was at UBC is not unrelated to my $250 a year Starbucks budget. Having hardly consumed any caffeine over the break (barring the occasional cup of tea or coffee with a friend), it’s surprising to see such skittishness return.

Stats meeting and Indian food

Compared with the past few days, today was warm, luminous, and bright. Walking to the Manor Road building, Oxford looked like an entirely different place from the cold and drizzly expanse it has been for the better part of the last week. It’s the kind of day that in the midst of which you can’t help feeling more optimistic.

The stats meeting today went fairly well. It was too well attended to work as a cohesive whole and dividing it into smaller groups would have required more centralization than was likely to emerge from such an ad hoc assembly. Regardless, in an informal kind of way we managed to address a few of the issues that had been making me anxious. Hopefully, I will somehow be able to get hold of one of the textbooks before the exam takes place: the libraries I’ve found have all been stripped of their copies. The only thing I am really shaky about is the math behind logit regressions, though I am fairly sure we’re essentially meant to treat it as a black box operation.

Tomorrow, I am determined to rise early, infuse myself with coffee acquired with difficulty from a recalcitrant Starbucks staff this afternoon, and delve into all the inter-term break work I so admirably pledged to complete weeks ago.

Dinner with Louise this evening went well. I maintain that the vegetable Vindaloo at Kashmir on Cowley Road is one of the best examples of the variety I’ve encountered, though my deprivation from tasty ethnic food here makes me more likely to see any example in a good light. Hopefully, I will have the chance to see Louise again before her departure. Oxford shall be a poorer place for her absence, as of Friday.

I got my Hilary Term battels pidged to me today: £964.08, even after all my refunded meals.
The bulletin board on the wall behind my desk is now completely covered with photos, postcards, and miscellaneous reminders. It makes the room feel much richer.
Does human cognition employ Bayesian reasoning? This article makes an interesting case for why it may.
“Westfall” by Okkervil River is quite a good song. My thanks to Tristan for giving it to me initially.
Oh, and Apple, I can’t believe you would be so stupid as to add a spyware-like feature to the newest version of iTunes. How stupid and disrespectful, and just when you are trying to get good press for new products. It’s fairly benign, so I am not really angry, but you really can’t claim to be a superior breed of company if you’re using the same kind of technology for which that lots of other companies are rightly in the doghouse. Turn it off.

More revision and “How to Eat like a Grad Student”

Today was spent chewing over material from the quantitative methods lectures, looking up key terms online, reading about neorealism, and taking breaks to read The Economist. Such is the natural conduct of an international relations graduate student. Since I proposed the joint study session for the stats exam tomorrow afternoon, I feel I should be well prepared for it.

Looking through the Cabin Fever photos this afternoon, during a study break, I was reminded of how much I miss the people who were there: Tristan, Alison, Jonathan, Nick. Neal, and Meaghan especially. I hope I get the chance to see all of you somewhere, before I leave Oxford in summer of 2007. This is one reason I am glad to have digitized more than 5000 photos before leaving Vancouver.

Motivated largely by the desire to avoid stats, I made an unusually complex dinner tonight. I don’t even know how to categorize it, but I will explain for the benefit of people in similar living arrangements:

How to Eat like a Grad Student
An occassional new feature of a sibilant intake of breath

Preparation time: 20 minutes (if you stagger everything correctly)

Vegetarian (vegans could replace the butter with olive oil and cheese with vegan cheese-like stuff)

Nutrients: calories (potatoes), protein (cheese, beans, tofu), hot sauce

Requires minimal kitchen equipment

Costs less than 5 Pounds

His Dark Materials

Large bowl or plate (courtesy of Margaret)

Sharp knife (in my case, my Swisstool multitool)

Frying pan (courtesy of Sarah)

Microwave oven

Stove (apparently called a ‘cooker’ over here)

Optional: goggles (if your eyes object as much to the sulpher dioxide released by chopped and cooking onions as mine do)

Potatoes (3 medium)

Onions (red, 3 medium)

Kidney beans (1 can, in chili sauce)

Hot sauce of your choice

Tofu (about 100 cubic centimetres)

Sharp Cheddar cheese (about 30 ccs)

Butter (about 10 ccs)

Preparation:

Wash potatoes, cut about halfway through lengthwise to release steam, microwave until cooked.

Heat frying pan to maximum temperature, add butter.

Peel and chop onions into small pieces.

Fry onion pieces in butter until browning.

Add hot sauce.

Chop tofu into 1cc pieces, chop or crumble cheese.

Add can of kidney beans to cooked onions.

Add cheese and tofu.

Add more hot sauce, cook until uniformly warm.

Cut cooked potatoes into pieces or slices

Put onion/bean complex on top of potatoes.

This makes more than enough for one hungry person and tastes way better than the same recipe with any of the components removed. If you add enough hot sauce, it makes a good decongestant if you have a bit of a cold.

With a few more potatoes, this could easily serve two people. It’s a scalable recipe. Actually, this one is good enough that I might even try subjecting another person to it. Cooking for more than one would obviously be dramatically more efficient, as the marginal time for preparing a second portion of the above is dramatically less than the marginal time for preparing the first portion.

The most sensible way to deal with reading for the first core seminar is to delay it until after the exam. The exam finishes at 4:30pm on Friday and the seminar isn’t until the following Tuesday. To do the reading now would waste valuable revision time (or, at least, time I can spend thinking and writing about revising).

As I am sure most people could guess, the two for one deal on strange Superdrug brand energy drinks can lead to brief periods of very high productivity, followed by a pronounced dip characterized by hunger and a weird inability to concentrate. (How to shop like a graduate student: yes, I would like to buy these cans of energy drink and four tubes of discounted toothpaste, paying with a foreign credit card.)
I am looking forward to a pre-departure dinner of Indian food with Louise tomorrow. Delicious, delicious vegetarian curry, dahl, etc on Cowley Road.
Looks like you can’t trust writable CDs for long-term backup. Good thing hard drives are getting so cheap.
Seeing all the IR M.Phils returned from miscellaneous places around the world tomorrow is a much anticipated happening. It’s always a lot easier to motivate yourself to work as part of a working group.