Category: Rants

Posts where I spout off on one topic or another

Partisanship and politics

I read an article by Wells Tower in this month’s issue of Harper’s called “The Kids are Far Right” that seemed primarily meant to terrify readers with anecdotes about conference rooms crammed full of teenage conservative partisans. Many of the passages did have a chilling effect upon me, but I think the piece is more important for what it reveals about conviction, deliberation, and the nature of political consensus that for the direct observations included.

The most difficult kind of politics to deal with theoretically is the variety based upon a zero-sum consensus on who is right, and who can impose their views. Under such an order, the key elements of certain issues are no longer really under discussion: people have taken positions and are preparing to fight it out as can best be managed. While I intuitively feel as though it’s important for there to be a real discussion, there is no escaping the desperate twinge that accompanies reading about people who want to auction the national parks to timber companies, take education entirely out of the hands of government, and who believe that the greatest injustice relating to Hurricane Katrina was the police taking away some people’s guns. “Live and let live” is not a dictum that can be applied when the contest is over institutions and resources that are in contention between dissenting groups, especially when they are likely to be used to force certain modes of living upon the ‘losers’ of the political struggle.

People who adopt the kind of xenophobic, militaristic, and anti-government perspective highlighted in the Harper’s article seem, to me, outside the sphere in which political discussion can take place. That said, they probably feel likewise about people who believe that in an ideal world, natural resources would be managed internationally, that nobody in a well-ordered society has reason to own a personal firearm, or that governments should get out of the business of defining who can or cannot get married.

There is considerable attraction in the idea of moderation: both as something with inherent value and a mechanism for convincing the undecided. That said, regardless of your political leanings there are things about which it is intolerable to argue feebly. To be forceful, honest, and convincing in expressing moral and political views is profoundly difficult in a partisan environment. When surrounded by those who agree, the danger is that of slipping into the kind of irresponsible certainty that the Harper’s article indirectly accuses the conservative conference of fostering. When surrounded by those with a profoundly different view, the danger is to mount an overly insular and reactionary defence. In either case, the difficulty of dealing with profound differences of opinion is underscored.

Another loan letdown

My student loan appeal has gone through and they increased my allotment by $623: not quite the expansion for which I was hoping. Essentially, the reason for this is that they have pre-set formulas for allotting loan amounts that adapt poorly to the nature of an Oxford education. They are based on the cost of living in Canada, and they do not reflect understanding of how Oxford terms work. They certainly do not reflect the extreme cost differentials between attending graduate school in Canada and doing so in a place like this.

A word of warning to future applicants: do not expect even half as much student loan funding in your second year as in your first; this, they ought to make clear before you go. In my case, seems as though some kind of additional fundraising is going to be required, if I am to make it through Trinity term and my exams.

See also: prior ravings about school related government bureaucracy.

Hiccups and new hardware

As the number of support requests I am getting from friends with brand-new MacBooks demonstrates, buying hardware that has just been released – even from a good company like Apple – is likely to land you with all the teething troubles inherent.

Apple laptop lines (formerly, the iBooks and Powerbooks; now, the MacBooks and MacBook Pros) tend to get quietly upgraded as they age: they highlight the bigger hard drives and faster processors, but the more important changes are usually fixes for issues that have cropped up among the early adopters.

The general maxim: if you want to avoid tech support and headaches, let others walk ahead of you. My iBook may take fifteen times longer to boot than the new MacBooks, but at least it does so consistently.

PS. Those having trouble with MacBooks not restarting, shutting down randomly, and doing other problematic things with regards to power should try the following:

  1. Make sure you have downloaded and installed all the patches for Mac OS X itself. You should have your system to check for these daily, and you should install them as soon as they come out.
  2. Try reseting your PRAM – this may sound like nonsense, but everyone with experience in trying to fix Apple hardware will be nodding knowingly to that suggestion.
  3. Try resetting your System Management Controller (much like the Power Management Unit in the iBooks and PowerBooks).

My general tips on protecting your computer are useful for at least minimizing the harm if a serious hardware issue arises.

I lost my laundry card, I lost my mind

Does it not seem amazing that an envelope containing my Codrington reader card, my St. Antony’s laundry card, and all my other Oxford-specific cards (except my Bodleian card) could remain unfound, despite four intensive searches of my entire room, since my return from Vancouver? I’ve gone through every drawer and pocket and folder and box. I’ve flipped through binders and looked through stacks of books. I have dug around under and behind furniture. All told, I have spent at least six hours searching.

All this in a room no more than four paces by six paces. The part likely to make me bitter is the reasoning behind putting them in an envelope in the first place: I didn’t want to lose them while I was in Vancouver.

The time has come, I think, to abandon the search, acknowledge that the cards are permanently vanished or destroyed, and replace those that are worth replacing. How much fun it will be to finally locate them, when I am in the process of moving out next June.

Imperfect correspondence

In my recent experience, people have a really terrible success rate in getting back to me. This is in cases where a specific agreement is made to exchange some kind of information, usually academically related, via email. I would hazard that I actually provide such information more than 99% of the times that I say I will, though perhaps not immediately. Based on two weeks of tracking, the rate for people who have promised me such information – ranging from notes to paper citations to club information – is a dismal figure of about 10%.

Even among people who I send an email asking again for the information they were meant to provide, the success rate has been no better than 50%. I understand that not everybody is as computationally active as I am, but it is extremely frustrating to be working in a place where almost all academic work flows through some sort of electronic channel, but people’s willingness to uphold basic commitments seems so low.

Hopefully, those rates will pick up a bit with regard to the Reading conference. Some of the things people mentioned sounded very useful and interesting indeed.

Republican torture ‘compromise’

Despite the thin rhetoric to the contrary, it is clear that the current American administration tolerates and abets torture, indefinite detention without charge, and other basic violations of human rights. This is an astonishing error on their part. It contradicts international law, including laws that have helped to protect Americans captured by foreign regimes. It significantly diminishes whatever claim to moral superiority the United States can use to help guide regimes entirely dismissive of human rights on to a more acceptable path. Finally, it neglects the very ideals about the respect for the human person that form the basis for the American constitution and the general American consensus on the nature of political ethics.

We can only hope that a saner administration will follow in the wake of this myopic crew.

The mainstream media is reporting on this here, here, here, here, here, and in many other places.

Minutes of the Senate Special Committee on Tormenting Graduate Students

Speaker: “Moving on. What can we do to this Ill-Nicky kid? Tax people?”

Tax Rep: “Hmm. We could reject all of his tuition credits from last year as a tax deduction, then surprise him with a bill for unpaid taxes…”

Speaker: “And…”

Tax Rep: “Nine days before we will start charging interest on them…”

Speaker: “And…”

Tax Rep: “Hmm, make sure he gets the letter just after traveling for a whole day, and while jetlagged?”

Speaker: “That will have to do. He should at least be glad he didn’t earn more money in the previous year for us to tax him on. Speaking of which, I see he has some student loan arrangements, what can you people offer me?”

Loan Rep: “We could allocate less than half the funds we did last year, when his educational expenses and personal assets were the same.”

Speaker: “Not bad, anything else?”

Loan Rep: “We could let him know just a week before classes start… just after he has travelled for a whole day and is both jetlagged and infected with illness!”

Speaker: “Not bad at all. I can always count on you guys.”

Speaker: “Now, you fellas at Disasters and Emergency Preparedness really haven’t been pulling your weight at these meetings. I just hope you have something extra special in the works.”

Incommunicado

I have returned home to find my internet connection at home completely disabled, the landline in our flat being strange and particular about who it will call, and my mailbox in Wadham College re-assigned, with my large pile of post dumped in a box with that of all the other people who have suffered the same undignified treatment. Wadham College has even disabled my access to the network in our Middle Common Room. I feel rather like Bilbo Baggins returning home from a long voyage to find his relatives auctioning off his possessions.

With luck, I should be back up and running by tomorrow. I certainly have a great deal to do.

Yet another one bites the dust

Back in mid-March, the third iPod that I owned began to fail. It was already the replacement for the replacement of the original one, which I purchased in October 2004. The device is the 20GB version of the fourth generation ‘Click Wheel’ iPod. I have rarely done anything wiser than buying the three year extended warranty. Now, the replacement that I got for the third iPod has itself failed: another toasted hard drive, ticking away and unable to be read or written to properly. Not even the program that is meant to restore it to factory settings will work. I suppose anything with moving parts is bound to fail sooner rather than later, but this is getting absurd. The fact that when they replace an iPod, they send you a refurbished one may explain why the failure rate on replacements is so high. Ironically, if the reliability of this iPod had been higher, I would probably be strongly considering buying a new one by now; since it has been so problematic, I am holding off and investigating other options.

People have frequently pointed out that my gadgets tend to fail surprisingly often. In response, I can offer some justifications:

  1. I have more gadgets than most people.
  2. In some cases, I have more finicky gadgets than other people.
  3. The gadgets I have, I use very often.
  4. The environments in which I live are wet.
  5. I am generally aware of exactly how the gadgets I use should work, and it catches my attention immediately when they do not do so.
  6. When I find a fault, I will almost always have it corrected – especially if the gear is under warranty.

While that does explain the frequency of dispatches, somewhat, it remains infuriating to live amidst a stream of little plastic boxes moving towards me and then away again by courier. As long as I have the real essentials: a computer, internet access, and a camera, I cannot really complain.

PS. My parents’ house is surrounded by weird wireless networks. At various times, we though they were coming from our own router, so we named and configured them all. Now there are always at least a couple of networks that look like they are ours, but where we cannot access the configuration page due to a password change. Why would people re-take the networks we accidentally configured, but then keep our esoteric names for them?