Oxford – Page 47 – a sibilant intake of breath

Stats by daylight, wandering by moonlight

Today was excellent. I saw a broad swathe of Oxford that was unknown before, and did so in good company. Prior to that, I actually got a surprisingly large amount of statistics revision done: quite necessary now that I know I am going into the exam with 66.2%. My assignment grades ranged from 55% to 78%, though not in accordance with how much I thought I understood the material. While it’s my lowest mark ever in a university course, it is one of the higher ones among a class that is intelligent and hardworking in every case. The poor overall performance is an indictment of the course: not the students. It takes considerable restraint to keep from constantly spouting off about how disappointing this one course has been: it did much to sour a term that was otherwise excellent. Anyhow, I will try not to think about statistics except insofar as it involves hammering the meaning of a chi-squared test into my head.

The path along Oxford canal is enormously more interesting than is suggested by its starting point at the Hythe Street Bridge. Walking along it, you pass all manner of weirs and cross a number of interesting bridges: all while passing a flotilla of long canal boats. Eventually, you reach an enormous meadow, both larger and flatter than the Christ Church Meadows, where – if you’re as lucky as I am – a whole pack of horses will wander over to you in search of food. As a place for wandering, I recommend it.

Wednesday, at 1:00pm, there will be a group study session for the quantitative methods exam. It’s happening in the room beside the cafeteria in the Manor Road building, where the Christmas party took place. I encourage people to bring notes, textbooks, questions, etc.
I am hoping to locate one of the two stats recommended textbooks tomorrow. As far as I can tell, the Bodeleian has one of each off site somewhere, and the two copies of the Wonnacott text in the SSL are both out until after the exam. Any suggestions?

Thinking about procrastination

Today has been a decidedly downpourish day in Oxford, trickling with rain when it wasn’t dumping it in vast quantities. Aside from a brief period spent in a cafe with a couple of friends, it was a pretty resolutely work focused period, with progress made on the neorealism and statistics fronts. I also finished a preliminary read of the first issue of The Economist for 2006. More members of Library Court are back (including Nora, who has returned from visiting Bilyana’s family), so the overall impression of marching towards term time is well established. For a while, I really was labouring under the illusion that school would never resume.

I think the reason why I spend so much time at Starbucks here (reading, not buying their mediocre Christmas Blend) is because it’s the best kitchen substitute I have. Reading in libraries is difficult because of just how acute the desire not to be there becomes. Likewise, reading in my room is difficult due to the presence of ample material for the most entertaining use of time than course related reading. As such, a hybrid of the two is quite helpful. In North Vancouver, that was the dining room table, either in the afternoon or late at night. As long as I had my iPod playing, people could use the living room and kitchen without bothering me at all. The other, oft-mentioned, example is the Fairview kitchens where I recall reading quite happily in the presence of Meghan, Tristan, and Christina at various times. Since the Library Court kitchen is just a kitchen, with no tables at which to sit, there is no such intermediate space in college. The Middle Common Room (MCR) really doesn’t fit the bill for me. The closest approximation, then, is the Cornmarket Street Starbucks: my kitchen by proxy.

As a graduate student, I don’t feel that any kind of reading is entirely irrelevant, especially when in a field as diverse as international relations. Everything from non-fiction books in other fields to contemporary novels has some applicability. Also, I am much more likely to remember and be affected by your average really good novel than I am by this or that piece of historical or theoretical reading in my subject area. Non-course readings therefore falls into a category of quasi-procrastinatory activities, like blogging. It serves a non-trivial purpose, but should not be allocated large amounts of time when there are important, urgent things to be done. That said, it’s better than wasting away hours on things with no redeeming academic, social, or financial value.

When it rains here, it doesn’t seem to become all that much warmer as a result, unlike most of my experience in Vancouver. As such, it was through a miserable combination of cold and wet that I trudged to and from G & D’s, where I spent a productive few hours reading with Margaret. I hope her pair of papers with deadlines looming and upcoming exam all go well. Sheltering in Wadham, I feel sincerest pity for anyone who has to spend a long time out and about tonight.

It should be noted that while the Very Short Introduction to Cryptography was tolerable but fairly basic, the one on David Hume is incredibly boring, and the one on Emotion incredibly speculative, frustrating, and poorly written. I am now firmly resolved to buy no more of them, despite the appeal of the concept.
Many thanks to Alex Stummvoll for the postcard from New Zealand. I hope he had a wonderful time there.
My veteran Columbia shoes have begun to literally fall apart: ripping along seams and falling apart around the sole. As I recall, I bought these shoes with my father more than a year and a half ago. They have served well over that time, and I do not relish the idea of buying shoes here. Shoe shopping is an activity I dread quite enough in Canada, where a pair of solid shoes can cost as little as twenty Pounds, and fear that I will despise on this side of the Atlantic. In the end, I think it’s the little things like that that force most people to return home.
The more miscellaneous living stuff I acquire, the more obvious it becomes that moving to London for a summer job would be a very difficult matter indeed. It would take many expensive, time consuming train or bus journeys. While I might be able to find some kind of storage in Oxford, it would certainly be a pain. Living here would be better for thesis research, anyhow. Hopefully some scholarship will come through and take a bit of the heat off.
This week’s Economist features both a link to a gang-run website (including photos taken in Canada) and a reference to the Dan Savage definition of Santorum, which they cite as being “something indescribable in a family newspaper.”

Heavily school-focused post

Happy Birthday Meghan Mathieson

I went to the country library today with Louise and finished a good chunk of Waltz before signing up for a card and renting a copy of The Life Aquatic. (The local public library here charges you about $7 Canadian to rent a DVD.) My suspicion that Louise would enjoy the film was well founded. Spending time with her today was most enjoyable: how sad that she will be leaving on Friday, the same day as my apprehension-inducing quantitative methods exam will be taking place.

While there is some temptation to express bitterness about how the most interesting thing to happen in Oxford since Michaelmas ended is getting crammed into the last week of break, amidst some frantic studying and preparation, I am resolved to be more grateful than that. Indeed, any opportunity you get to meet someone whom you feel really comfortable, and with with whom you enjoy conversing a great deal, is quite a precious thing. We have resolved to mark her departure with delicious vegetarian Indian food.

I am starting to get nervous about how much is to be done before next term. There is the possibility of being called on to present during the first core seminar, and the attendant necessity to do a good job of the readings and prepare speaking notes. There is the need to do the general and first week reading for the qualitative methods course, which is incidentally being coordinated by my supervisor: Dr. Andrew Hurrell. Finally, there is the need to do a great many small tasks that I put off last term for completion during the break – back when it looked like an incredible luxurious and empty six week span.

Information on the quantitative methods test

At the time when Claire showed it to me, it seemed like a clever idea to photograph the information page on the stats exam. Apparently, it was distributed during the last lab, though I never saw it. While it’s an awkward medium to transcribe from, hopefully doing so will make it stick in my mind. I present it here, somewhat truncated, for anyone in the program who hasn’t seen it. The test is two hours long and has two sections. It will be happening in the St. Cross Building next Friday at 2:30pm. The pass mark is 60%.

The multiple choice and short answer section is based on the following concepts:

1) Descriptive statistics: Types of variables (interval, ordinal, cardinal); Centres of Distributions (mean, median, mode); Spread of Distributions (variance and standard deviation).

2) Sampling and probability: Types of sampling (random sampling, cluster and stratified random sampling, sampling error and non-sampling biases); Probability and probability distributions (models, continuous distributions, the noral distribution).

3) Hypothesis testing and the accuracy of estimates: Accuracy of estimates (calculating and interpreting standard errors, confidence intervals for means and proportions); Hypothesis testing (null and alternative hypotheses, p-values, type I and II errors).

4) Linear regression: Depending and independent variables; Ordinary Least Squares (least squares criterion and error term); Regression model and assumptions; Multiple regression (controlling for other variables, causality, categorical variables as dummies; interaction effects; model building); Regression diagnostics (non-linear relationships, heteroskadisticity, outliers, multicollinearity).

5) Contingency tables and odds rations: Chi-squared test; Contingency tables and expected frequencies; Differences of proportions, calculating and interpreting odds ratios.

6) Logistic regression: Reasoning behind the use of logistic regression for binary variables; Odds ratios and logistic regression; Predicted probabilities for logistic regression.

The second part is based around analysis of the use of statistics in a segment of an IR journal article we will be presented with, something like the last assignment. I can email people the actual jpeg images, upon request.

Overall, it doesn’t look so bad. Most of the above concepts were at least introduced in the Tilley lectures. Reading the relevant chapters from a textbook should fill in the gaps. Moreover, I get the sense that the course directors really don’t consider this a central part of the M.Phil. Otherwise, they would have put in the time and energy to make sure it got decent treatment.

In closing, I can’t resist putting one more link to my statistics play in one act. Despite the mixed reviews, I find it acceptably entertaining.

I was pleased to learn yesterday that more than 1000 people have downloaded the NASCA report from the IRSA webpage since it went online in October.
I’d write something cleverer, but I really should get back to my Earl Gray tea and reading.
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One week of break remains

Anyone who has ever been amused to see the photo of a terrified looking Prince Charles pouring a pint, found in the King’s Arms Pub within Wadham College, might be disappointed to learn that they have the same exact print over at the Angel and Greyhound. I don’t know if either pub was actually the place where the photo was taken, but it certainly diminishes how amusing it is to see it in a second place. It’s like when you’re in Venice and you realize that all the cheap table glass in Murano is identical in each shop and comes from China.

Touring Oxford

This afternoon, I met Spencer and his partner for the World Debating Championships and gave them a walking tour of Oxford. Before carrying on, I should note that Michael Kotrly and his partner won the tournament, a very impressive feat. I know Michael through UBC debate, where I believe I was treasurer during his presidency. My congratulations go out to him for an extremely impressive performance.

The walk, which I recommend to anyone inclined to play tour guide in Oxford, began at Cornmarket and High Street, from which we walked up St. Aldate’s towards the Folly Bridge. Glancing into the Christ Church main quad, we passed The Head of the River and walked along the Isis until the paths diverge northward again along the eastern canal. We followed that up past Magdalen, where I would recommend having a look at the gardens and greenhouses, before turning left and heading back up the high street towards Carfax.

We ducked into University College, through Logic Lane, and passed through two of their quads to see the Shelley Memorial. We then passed St. Mary’s Church and briefly entered the Codrington Library from Radcliffe Square. Leaving the square from the north, we went down Hollywell Street to New College, where I showed them the plague mound and the cloisters (as featured, somewhat incongruously as far as architecture goes, in the most recent Harry Potter film). Leaving New, we walked back up Hollywell Street, had a look through Wadham, the gardens, and library court, before going up Parks Road to Rhodes House and the Natural History Museum.

After looking at the displays there and in the Pitt Rivers museum, we doubled back. One thing I had never noticed before: the Natural History Museum has a stuffed kakapo, of all animals. Those who don’t know what I am talking about are strongly encouraged to read Douglas Adams’ excellent book Last Chance to See.

The last stop of the four-hour tour was The Turf, where we had a pint before the debaters caught their train back to London. It was good to see Spencer. He doesn’t seem to have been too badly grizzled by the extreme responsibilities of his post as President of the UBC Alma Mater Society.

What made today particularly special was seeing a trio of people I have missed a lot over the break. Bilyana is back from her winter break trip home, as are Margaret and Roham. I ran into Bilyana outside Rhodes House while giving the tour and Roham outside the Natural History Museum. We simply must organize a study group for the statistics exam next Friday. Margaret I met after I noticed her light on while walking back from the train station. Though she is mired in work, she still brings a friendly feeling back into the city, as seeing all three friends did. I now believe that term is starting again in a practical, rather than a theoretical, way. It scarcely seemed possible during the days when I wandered an abandoned Oxford from and abandoned Wadham with only excellent conversations with Louise to break the solitude.

Evening in Oxford with Wadham graduates

As part of a general effort to get to know people in my college better, I followed Kelly and her sister Bonnie to the King’s Arms tonight to meet a whole crew of Wadham graduates tonight. Shifting between there and The Mitre, people had a few drinks and conversed. I owe David Patrikarakos for the pint of Guinness he kindly bought me.

Among the graduates who I did not know previously, I was particularly glad to meet a particle physicist working on dark matter and a fellow Vancouverite. In the latter case, the similarities are legion. We both lived near Trout Lake, we both have some connection to North Vancouver high schools (Handsworth and Carson Graham, respectively), and we both did judo with Hiroshi Nishi as an instructor. We both went to UBC and took courses with Dennis Danielson. Given that he did an honours English degree, I am sure we know a lot of the same people.

Incidentally, and before I go on too long about this, there have been a lot of headaches with regards to Wadham people and getting mentioned on the blog. There are those who tremble at the prospect and, when I know who they are, I generally avoid mentioning them at all and certainly avoid saying anything personal. Then there are those who are neutral, those I simply don’t know the position of, and those who are positively irked not to be mentioned. It’s a lot to remember, so my apologies if I slip up from time to time. A few ugly experiences are teaching me to err on the side of caution. If I don’t mention you by name, it’s probably because I barely know you and met you in a context that someone could possibly, maybe find objectionable (like… a pub… gasp!).

Anyhow, the number of Wadham graduate students who I had rarely if ever seen before demonstrates the extent to which a bit more concentration on the social side of college may be warranted. I shouldn’t let my general aversion to loud music and strong aversion to cigarette smoke be too much of a restricting factor. Thankfully, The Mitre is significantly less smoky than the King’s Arms, which is becoming infamous in my mind for an exceptionally high carcinogen count.

The election

Frustrated by scandal and a general sense of dissatisfaction, Canadians want a political party that they can really believe in, rather than support as the least bad option. As the campaign carries on, it is increasingly clear that the Tories are not that party. From mandatory sentencing to militarizing the Arctic, their policies run the gamut from retrograde to foolish. Much as I would love to have an opposition party with a credible chance at serving as a good government, these are simply not them.

The Liberal party deserves some punishment for sleaze and an uninspired agenda under Paul Martin, but the people who would suffer under a Tory government (poor people, people outside Alberta and Ontario) don’t deserve it.

One last note: people should beware direct interpretation of Canadian electoral polls. As I explained to Margaret, the absolute share of the vote has no direct bearing in a Parliamentary system like Canada’s. Since each riding elects an MP and the party with the most MPs is called upon to form a government, all you need in theory is a single-vote win in a plurality of ridings. While that is very unlikely, the same property means that parties with broad national support have an advantage against those with concentrated support. Every extra Tory vote in a solidly blue (Canadian Tories use blue, Liberals use red) riding in Alberta, beyond the winning vote, is effectively wasted. That said, it’s not encouraging to see support for the Conservatives as high as it is, given how their campaign has been unfolding.

According the the Royal Mail registered mail tracking service, my Chevening Scholarship application “has been passed to the overseas postal service for delivery.” Fingers tightly crossed.
Here’s an entry about electoral security being done right in Wisconsin.
Corporate social responsibility, being done wrong by Microsoft.
It’s amusing to note just how frequently some people seem to be Googling themselves and following the links to my blog. Either people Googling themselves or someone at a particular IP address Googling someone else on a near-daily basis.
Tomorrow morning, I am meeting Louise to do some pre-term reading. I shall be extremely glad for her company.

Working, once again, to increase the number of facts known per cubic centimetre of brain

Today was based around several rotations of the great term-time wheel of reading positions that I have established. Cornmarket Street Starbucks to Nuffield Library, to High Street Starbucks, to Upper Camera, to Codrington, to Wadham Library, to Wadham JCR (when quiet), to Wadham MCR (when quiet), to Blackwell’s on Broad Street and around and around again: reading a chapter or two in each position. The strategy keeps my brain from just skipping over long sections of text, while also helping me resist the desire to do something more complex than reading.

I was assisted today by the subject matter. I finished the second half of Richard Overy’s excellent Why the Allies Won: possibly the most engaging book I’ve read since arriving in the U.K. It is well written, convincing, and authoritative. Even though it covers the very familiar terrain of the second world war, it still conveys a great deal of new information and a deepened sense of understanding. Recommended to anyone with an interest in military history.

Dramatically less engaging was my continued slog through Keohane’s Neorealism and its Critics. While it has demonstrated that my conception of neorealism is, in some ways, a bit of a parody, it still isn’t the kind of book you wake up early or stay up late for the enjoyment of reading. Tomorrow morning, I will try to do one of my circuits with it as the sole book in my possession. Despite my best efforts to train myself otherwise, I will almost always read books in order from most to least interesting. This means that I neglect books that are important but very boring, but it does maximize the overall amount of reading I do. Related personal tendencies: eating food I buy in order from least to most preparation time, until I only have food that requires extensive preparation, and wearing clothes in order from most to least comfortable, until I have no clean ones left.

Tomorrow afternoon, good things are planned. For now, I am going to bo back to at least another four hours’ reading, even though most of the nodes on my circuit have already closed.

I was pleased to receive a barrage of comments from Meghan today. A surprising number of people seem to find it difficult to post comments. For their benefit, here are some brief instructions.Instructions for commenting:
First, you need to get to the page specific to the post you want to comment about, rather than one of the archive pages that lists a whole month worth. To do that, just go to the bottom of any post and click on either the blue underlined time at which is was posted, or on the blue underlined bit where it lists the number of comments. For instance: “9 comment(s).”

Once you are on a single post page, like this one you will be able to see existing comments. Click the “Post a Comment” link to leave one. Clicking the “Home” link will take you back to the front page of the blog.

Once you have clicked “Post Comment” a new page will open. Then, in the page that comes up, just type your comment. You can enter Blogger login information, if you have it. If you do, it will put your default picture beside your comment, as well as allowing you to delete it later. You can also use ‘Other’ to leave a comment under your own name or alias or ‘Anonymous’ to leave a comment marked as such. Such comments, only I can remove. You will need to copy the squiggly letters that appear below the comment box into the text box below them. This is to keep spam robots from leaving hundreds of comments about their various sordid wares.

Clicking the blue underlined “Milan” at the bottom of every post opens a window for sending a message to me, if you have configured your email client to do so. Using the “Contact Me” link in the sidebar does the same thing. Finally, the little white envelope lets you email a post to someone else. Please don’t send them to me, I already have them.
At some point, I will produce an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions list) for the blog, but I have resolved to do no more structural modification until I’ve dealt with the stats exam and next term’s pre-reading.
On a related note, please stop going to the old address (sindark.blogspot.com). The continued existence of that page is causing problems for search engines. The new address, sindark.com, is what everyone should use.
The iBook is increasingly grinding and heaving its way through collections of tasks it formerly had no trouble with. I’ve taken to using my iPod to listen to music while on it, just to free up some RAM and CPU time from iTunes. Given my extremely hesitant attitude towards installing new software or keeping programs I do not use, I don’t know what’s going wrong.
The comment about a relative dearth of environmental politics related stuff here is spot on. It’s partly a question of what the course and life in general brings to my doorstep. That said, I will make more of an effort to read and talk about my alleged intended speciality.
This is my 1050th post made through Blogger. That obviously doesn’t include the hundreds of OpenDiary posts in the pre-Blogger era.

Another productive day

This was an exceptionally productive morning, both before and after meeting Claire for coffee. Into the post, the scholarship application has gone. Likewise, my absentee ballot request: out into the ether of the international telephone system. As always, Joanna Coryndon in the Tutorial Office was very helpful with all the bureaucratic hassles of university life. I was disappointed to learn that she didn’t win the college staff member of the year designation. As I’ve said before, the human face she contributed to the admissions process did much to skew my thinking towards Oxford.

During the afternoon, I finished the Atwood book, reviewed briefly below, and made decent progress on the Hume and Keohane books. By the end of the inter-term break, I will have finished the reading assigned by Dr. Hurell and hopefully made a more general start on the material for next term. I may well need to present for fifteen minutes in the first seminar with Jennifer Welsh and David Williams, after all. All of this reading was done in the Upper Radcliffe Camera, which also reminded me of the increasingly pressing need to find a summer job. The two seem unrelated, but places that are fairly rarely visited have a way of making your mind jump back to what was being thought about when last there.

Thanks to Claire, I even got a copy of the information sheet on the upcoming statistics exam. Part A is a multiple choice and short answer component, centred around general principles in statistics, as elaborated in Dr. Tilley’s lectures. For that, I will definitely want to read the relevant chapters from a good statistics textbook. Part B is interpretation of statistical tables, such as are output by STATA and found in many American international relations journal articles. Having looked over the description, I am not terribly worried. Still, it’s something I will need to devote a couple of days to, at least, during the next ten days or so.

Ever More Banking Frustrations

After months of trying, I finally got access to NatWest Online Banking. As I have come to expect, it includes a powerfully counterproductive security feature. Instead of entering a PIN or password, it forces you to put, say, the 3rd, 5th, and 12th characters of the password into little boxes. This basically means that you need to write your password down, number off the letters, enter the numbers they want, and destroy it. It is completely contrary to convenience and introduces a whole new security failure of visible passwords all over the place or the need to securely destroy them. As punishment for such idiocy, I shall simply not use their credit card unless absolutely necessary. Based on what I’ve seen, I can’t begin to comprehend why Britain is a financial services hub. Banking here is a tragicomic business.

First Oxford exam in ten days…
photo.sindark.com now automatically links to my Photo.net page.
More family members that I thought are apparently reading the blog. My greetings to you all. I shall have to be on my best behaviour, henceforth.
Arthur: “What happens if I push this red button?”
[noise]
Ford: “What happened?”
Arthur: “A light came on and said ‘Please do not push this button again.'”
Related concept: the self-referential warning sign
As far as Google is concerned, the blog is still a real mess. The old URL still has hundreds of links to it, now all broken. Hopefully, a few crawls over the next few months will fix things. Until then, I will try to stop moving things around.

First post of ’06

Well, what a party. Cricket, port, and Moroccan food. My thanks to Claire for bringing it all together. More comprehensive reporting later.

I was under-dressed for the occasion, taking ‘black tie’ to mean ‘the most formal clothes that you own.’ I hope I wasn’t judged too harshly for showing up in a business suit. The atmosphere seemed fairly laid-back, despite the constant pitter-patter of flash capacitors. Quite possibly, the now-ubiquitous digital camera is the attainment of Bentham’s concept of the panopticon.

This party was definitely smaller than the first party I attended amidst the university offices. There was a lot of good conversation, particularly about strategic studies stuff with a young man who I hope I will meet again. He looks particularly quizzical in this photo.

In any case, I hope everyone enjoyed themselves as much as I did. It was amusing to arrive back at Wadham, three hours into the first day of the new year, and chat with the night porter for a few minutes. My best wishes to all those in Wadham, to my family, and to friends around the world. May this next orbit be a better one than the one which preceded it.

Final post for 2005

Culinary attempt

I made an attempt at an omelette today, using a new non-stick frypan I bought at Boswells at half price. While it never quite entered the world as an omelette – the word ‘scramble’ comes to mind – it was nonetheless quite tasty. It had peppers, sharp cheddar, garlic, ginger, tofu, and potato. That is to say, every kind of vegetable matter I had at the time of production. Tofu is enormously better when cooked in a frying pan – it loses the squishy mud texture. As a culinary experiment, I rate this a low pass. It didn’t quite end up an omelette, but was still enjoyable to eat. I really need to get a cutting board: it’s absurd to be using my Swisstool and pieces of paper towel to chop up all my cheese and veggies.

The book which I’ve previously mentioned being in the process of reading and enjoying is Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad: the Myth of Penelope and Odysseus: a retelling of The Odyssey from Penelope’s perspective. The best thing about it is definitely the skilled narrative style: delivered from Hades with an impressive emotive range. If I were to teach The Odyssey, I would assign this as a companion work. It’s also good to see some of the dodgy aspects of a piece of literature addressed in a way that is creative, as well as cutting. I will post a full review here once I finish it.

Now, I need to don my suit and head out in search of both dessert – I am thinking pie and ice cream – and beer for tonight’s New Year’s party. Judging by the high quality of Claire’s last party, which I remember partly for the lengthy argument I got into about superstring theory, it should be a good one. There look to be rather fewer people this time round, which will doubtless alter the character of the gathering considerably. In any case, I am glad to be going. I shall write something about it tomorrow.

Happy New Year, everyone. I hope people have fun tonight. There’s really no point in me specifically listing resolutions. It has all be said here before.

A number of new posts are up on Kerrie and Nolan’s blog: describing their ongoing adventures – and misadventures – in Africa. This entry is particularly interesting, though also quite dispiriting.
If you’re looking for something brief, engaging, and lighthearted to read, try this account of a man struggling to keep squirrels out of his birdfeeder. Anyone who has ever seen a full size Toblerone completely devoured by these furry-tailed rats will empathize completely.
What Germans do for New Year’s, apparently. This is just as strange, but rather funnier.

Oxford: starting to resume a term-time pitch

Today went well. I got a good amount of reading done during the morning, afternoon, and early evening. Then, I had dinner with Kelly and her two sisters visiting from Alabama. Having some good, pan-fried potatoes was extremely welcome, and a reminder of so many excellent Greek restaurants left behind.

A while after dinner, our hextet (which gained two other Wadhamite members) made its way to the King’s Arms for a couple of pints and a few hours of conversation. I always find it interesting to introduce people to the Oxford environment, though I am still a neophyte myself. It’s the difference between being some shade of green and being absolutely, glowingly, fluorescently green. One inescapable downside: after a few hours in an English pub, my whole universe smells of tobacco smoke. Oh, the toxins.

For tomorrow night, I am invited to a party that Claire is throwing. I am taking ‘black tie’ to mean ‘the only business suit you own.’ Also, I am meant to bring some kind of dessert, as my contribution to the dinner. While suggestions are always welcome, I think I will end up scouring the myriad shops of Oxford in search of something both delicious and quite mutually acceptable.

There’s been another great big hubbub about torture, all through the blogging universe. If you are familiar with this region of social space, you will already know what I mean. I would re-post the ambassadorial documents in question, but I think they are already widely dispersed enough as to not be in danger of suppression. If not, here is a page full of links to them. This really is something that people should care about. Torture, in any circumstance and for any reason, is basically the classic definition of a crime against humanity. This is not something we can tolerate, as citizens.
Anyone considering firing a gun into the air to celebrate the new year, please don’t. It really kills people. Also, it reaffirms stereotypes.
There has been at least one really superb SG photoset in the past 24 hours. Thanks a lot, Tristan and Christina.

A joyful first day in Oxford

Today was a brilliant day. I managed to be out and about by 8:00am Tallinn time (10:00am here, but still) in order to go for coffee and a walk with Margaret. For the first time, we walked through the botanical gardens around Magdalen College. In particular, the contents of the greenhouses were fascinating and beautiful. I especially liked seeing all the edible species: coffee, peanuts, plantain, etc. I looked for Camellia Sinensis, but had no luck.

Afterwards, we went on a tour through several Oxford bookshops – all of which made me burn with the desire to read more. In the end, I bought three: all of them from the Blackwells series of Very Short Introductions. I got ‘Emotion,’ about which I know very little, ‘Hume,’ who I consider my favourite philosopher, and ‘Cryptography,’ about which I always want to know more. Blackwells bookshop is definitely among my favourite places in Oxford. It makes me aspire to days of retirement when I can concentrate on reading, cooking, and gardening – as I envision that I shall.

Margaret is now departing for the next while, leaving me almost completely alone in Oxford. If I remember properly, Nora was supposed to come back on the 19th, but I haven’t seen any sign of her. Perhaps she is in London. Claire and Emily are definitely out of town, though perhaps Bryony is around. Alex is still in New Zealand – as you would expect after travelling so far – and I don’t know where Roham is located. Bilyana, I expect, is with her family up north.

Today also brought a vast amount of excellent mail. First, and largest, was a package from my mother for Christmas. They will be leaving tomorrow for North Carolina, so it seems unlikely that they will get mine until their return. My mother sent me a blast of Canadiana. She sent Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad: the Myth of Penelope and Odysseus in hardcover, along with an elegant bookmark. Unfortunately, the book is not inscribed, as I would strongly encourage anyone who sends me a book to do. She also sent me a very nice looking red, white, gray, and black scarf and another with a very intricate East Indian red and black pattern on it. The first, I think, is better suited to wear – the second to decorate my room with. The pattern reminds me of the piece of cloth that Kate used to cover her computer monitor, at her house in Victoria. Also decorative is the Red Cross calendar with pictures of Canada on it. Finally, she enclosed a large Canadian flag, for which I shall have to find a good spot. I am not sure whether it is the flag that Kate gave me ages ago and which I left in North Vancouver, or an entirely new one. I will need to borrow the hammer and nails from the housekeeper again. Many thanks to my family for such a considerate collection of gifts.

Along with the package from my mother, I got a Christmas card from her sister Mirka and my uncle Robert. Along with my cousins Megan and Dylan, they live in Bennington, Vermont, where my aunt teaches at the university. I very much hope they will have the chance to come visit Oxford while I am here. The Magdalen botanical gardens have definitely been added to my tour route. I must remember to write them a letter in response, as well as send one to my aunt, uncle, and grandmother in North Carolina.

Another envelope came from Meaghan Beattie in Vancouver. Along with a very sweet card, she sent me a genuine passport for Hell, such as we found and were enormously amused by when wandering in Chinatown. It includes a plane ticket to Hell (from Ming Fu Airlines) and a Bank of Hades (oddly, with a ‘Heaven Main Office’) chequebook and Mastercard. I am just as bemused by the collection as when we first encountered it, wandering Vancouver’s rainy streets. Meaghan is definitely among the Vancouverites whose direct company I miss the most. Unfortunately, I can see from the return address on the envelope that the postcard I sent her from Tallinn was sent to the wrong place. It will reach nothing more than a dead letter office, since it had no return address. I shall have to send her another, from Oxford.

The last package contributed still further to my collection of reading materials. An unknown person, who I strongly suspect to be Hilary McNaughton, sent me the Student’s Vegetarian Cookbook. Whoever did send it (and the package does not identify) gets me hearty thanks. While I may need to wait for retirement in order to start learning how to garden, learning how to cook sooner is almost certainly wise.

I suppose it may have been appropriate to refrain from opening what was clearly Christmas mail until the day itself, but the thought didn’t really occur to me until now and I have no regrets about not doing so. It has successfully pre-empted any possibility of feeling lonesome in a somewhat deserted Oxford over the next little while. It’s a wonderful feeling to have such a collection of concrete evidence of not having been forgotten by people elsewhere. The sheer satisfaction of it has convinced me to send more mail. It should also help me feel less overwhelmed about all the things that crop up demanding to be done after a trip. I tend to pick a long but pleasant one as an opening task, using breaks from it to complete short and unpleasant ones. You also need to stay on guard for moments suited to tasks that can only be completed in a particular state of mind, such as writing good letters.

During the afternoon, I worked out the shared tally for the Baltic trip, as well as entered the whole collection of figures into my finance tracking spreadsheets. [Section removed, 23 December 2005] Even with cheap flights and cheap cities, these things add up. That’s a quarter of what the whole Prague / Italy trip with Meghan Mathieson cost, and it was four times as long and started from Vancouver. I would tell you how it compares with other trips, but mining the old blog is tedious since it is no longer online and Google searchable. I also caught up with the many Oxford blogs that I read. I feel like I know these people rather better now than back when I first met a group of them. Perhaps the next few months will bring another such encounter.

People to whom I must write: Vermont Family, North Carolina Family, Meghan Mathieson, Meaghan Beattie.
Some good commentary on the security value of checks and balances from Bruce Schneier: my go-to guy for information about security.
The new version of MSN for Mac: takes more RAM, looks a bit slicker, still crashes just as often.
My brother Mica has a new video out: “Little Green Bag.” It may be a mark of the changing focus of his life that it is shot on campus at UBC, instead of in North Vancouver. I think the young woman in it may be Mica’s bombshell love interest from the musical Damn Yankees, reviewed on the old blog.
More than ever, I want to meet Philip Pullman, the masterful author of the His Dark Materials trilogy and an Oxford resident. Anyone who knows of an event where he will be present is politely begged to contact me about it.