a sibilant intake of breath – Page 832 – climate change activist and science communicator; photographer; mapmaker — advocate for a stable global climate, reduced nuclear weapon risks, and safe human-AI interaction

Disjointed thoughts

I don’t really know what to say about today, so I will talk about something more general instead. This term, it seems as though we are being presented with our first opportunity to take some initiative. That’s to say, elements of the workload are less focused on the completion of specific tasks and more tuned towards the advancement of general research. If I move quickly and find the right people, this might be a chance to step up involvement with the Environmental Change Institute. After today, I feel as though I need to be more aggressive in my questioning, when it comes to my thesis topic. In particular, I need to consider the very limited nature of some of the case studies I am considering. To say something really important, I need to do more.

Having just come back from the strategic studies dinner and presentation, I find myself hopelessly muddled. Somehow, it all combined to confuse things that had seemed fairly clear before. I am sorry to be vague, but I can’t even really comment on what’s eliciting such opaque responses. Since I need to be up early, I will read some Kerouac and go to sleep, rather than really contemplating it now. It feels like an idea that needs time to cook.

Emily and I set off fairly early tomorrow morning.

Preliminary QT results

This afternoon, in the exam schools, twenty-five names were posted on the board: results for our qualifying test. Since there are 28 people in the program, that means that three people have either asked not to have their names displayed or failed.

I was among the twenty-one who are known to have passed. Among the twenty-five listed, there are also four distinctions. I am told this is the highest number in at least five years. Last year, there were two. My energetic congratulations to Iason, Bryony, Matthew, and Robert Wood. The three unknowns could be any combination of passes, fails, and distinctions.

We will have numeric grades posted to us sometime in the next few days. Since the results are now officially in, I have re-posted the three questions that I chose to answer.

PS. On an unrelated note, Emily and I are meant to give a tour of Oxford to Martin Ziguele, Former Prime Minister of the Central African Republic, tomorrow morning. Tonight, he is presenting before the Strategic Studies Group, meaning I will be having dinner with him, Sheena, and Claire in New College.

Technical difficulties

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to post anything for today. Firstly, that’s because I was unusually busy. Secondly, my internet connection at Church Walk has failed: probably because I don’t have user credentials at St. Antony’s and they reviewed network access at the start of the term. Hopefully, I can sort that out today, along with learning how I did on the QT and picking up my bike from the first month maintenance that Beeline Cycles includes with bikes they sell.

Despite having no time to get into details (I need to finish a presentation on the importance of nuclear weapons to the Cold War staying cold), I can assert that yesterday was an excellent day.

At the cusp of a new term

Trinity term officially begins today, which means half again as much reading and paper writing as has taken place so far, all in the course of the next eight weeks. The core seminar for this term is the development of the international system from 1950 to present, which basically means great power diplomatic and military history. I think we’re all appreciative of the fact that it’s territory we’ve basically all covered to one extent or another before. You could hardly get this far if you hadn’t.

Looking back over the break, it has been quite a good one. I travelled to Chichester, Arundel, and Malta. I saw Sarah get married. I spent a week with my mother. I met a number of new and interesting people. I read some good books. I applied (unsuccessfully) for a number of scholarships, as well as submitting a paper to the MIT International Review. I wrote the qualifying test, in fairly respectable fashion. I moved to a new place. I cycled a few hundred kilometres, in aggregate. That’s pretty good for six weeks.

New duties

Along with the Vice-Presidential position, I have been given responsibility for the Strategic Studies Group website. I can already tell that it is orders of magnitude more complex than any website I’ve ever operated before. Looks like I will spend some portion of the next year learning how to use MySQL databases and the various content-management applications that keep the thing going. If all goes wrong, I made a full backup before I touched anything – a very time consuming task when there are thousands of sub-directories.

The first step, of course, is to quickly learn the nuts and bolts of posting informational updates. Later, I can really get acquainted with the innards of the site and the way it operates. Despite the fact that it doesn’t seem to use much more bandwidth than a sibilant intake of breath, they have an absurdly large amount allotted.

[6:03pm] Within hours of taking over the OUSSG site, I managed to crash it completely, by not understanding the way the content management system, the SQL databases, and the FTP server talk to one another. I managed to fix it by manually editing a configuration file, since the way I screwed it up completely disabled the web-based CMS. I am going to leave the whole thing alone for a while now…

Summary of summery pursuits

From late afternoon to early morning, today was a social whirlwind. I bumped into Lucy and Leonora on my way to Edwina’s sendoff. From there, I ducked out of The Turf for a bit to watch croquet in New College with Madgdy and Rob Moore. Then, I briefly went back to The Turf before heading to St. Cross College to watch more croquet and drink Pimms, in what I am told is an Oxonian tradition. It’s probably the influence of Dune upon me, but with her pashmina and blue eyes, Edwina had more than a bit of the Fremen look to her. She leaves for Australia tomorrow.

Later, I attended a dinner party at my new flat. All good fun, we listened to my ‘Demure’ playlist on the iPod Shuffle while eating, drinking, and exchanging stories. I appreciate the extent to which living with Kai and Alex draws me into new social environments, and into the company of new people.

That said, the party is ongoing, and it is anti-social to be elsewhere. Tomorrow, I delve into Kerouac, as well as taking over responsibility for the Strategic Studies Group website.

PS. This web comic I discovered today Diesel Sweeties will probably amuse those who make no attempt to suppress their nerdy tendencies. There are robots, and characters rendered as though on the SNES.

PPS. For about a week now, about five people a day have been finding the blog by clicking this picture of Tallinn at night when it comes up on Google Image Search. It isn’t a terribly good photo. I wish some of my better work was being showcased.

Discretionary reading

Early this afternoon, I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. While it was not at all what I expected, it was quite a fascinating book. Narrator-based novels have the potential to be the most interesting kind of character stories, and Mark Haddon delivers on that possibility with this unusual yet compelling book.

I enjoyed the mathematical, scientific, and factual asides. I don’t know how accurate a representation the book makes of Asperger’s Syndrome, but it struck me as credible and interesting during the course of reading it. The narrator is certainly an extremely sympathetic character.

I am glad I bought the book, because I will be able to lend it to other people. If Anna hasn’t read it yet, I will lend it to her when we meet next week. I need to learn her last name, so people won’t think I am referring to Anna Heimbichner from the program when I mention her.

Tonight, I am going to The Turf with a number of Edwina’s friends, to see her off before her departure. Later, Alex has arranged a dinner party with Byrony, Emily and her boyfriend, and some friends of his from Aberystwyth.

Big wheel keeps on turning

As if to demonstrate the slow but deadly rotation of bureaucratic gears, the University of British Columbia housing department sent me notice today that I am being fined for having a dirty oven: in the winter of 2003. I think that’s from the period when I was living with my abusive and criminal varsity hockey playing roommates.

The fine is $25, to be split between four long-dispersed (and two much despised) roommates, so the natural thing is just to pay it and be done with the matter. Even so, it strikes me as exceptionally odd that they would literally wait years to serve me with notice of such a thing. They want to be paid by May 5th.

Well endowed with fiction

With the completion of the exam, I find that my way of thinking about things quite unrelated to it has changed rather a lot. A kind of generalized urgency that had been prevalent before has softened a bit, leaving me more willing to take things as they come. I used my book token from one of the brain scan experiments to buy two books this afternoon: Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. I hope to get a good start on both over the weekend, as well as finishing my re-reading of Dune and The Skeptical Environmentalist. Reading fiction is one of the best things about times not yet endangered by papers and exams; of course, I’ve not been known to cease completely even during such times.

Our respite from schoolwork is not destined to be long-lived. Lectures resume on Monday and on Tuesday, we have our first core seminar discussion for the history from 1950 to present segment. I am told it’s on nuclear deterrence: an especially appropriate topic given the ongoing kerfuffle about Iran.

PS. Those who have not yet seen it should check out my brother Mica’s White Rabbit video. You can leave comments about it on his blog.

NASCA and the BPG

As Fernando pointed out to me, the final report of the Bi-National Planning Group (PDF), with whom we met while on the NORAD trip, has specifically endorsed some recommendations from the report (PDF) that I wrote on behalf of our group.

[The fifth] BPG recommendation supports key recommendations identified by the North American Security Cooperation Assessment (NASCA): “The United States and Canada should increase the transparency of the process by which they engage in bi-lateral defence negotiations, policy development, and operations; This process should include a focus on public understanding and involvement; Projects undertaken by academic institutions, and other civilian research organizations should be supported, particularly as means of generating transparency in, and awareness about, the defence planning process.The NASCA report was prepared by members of the University of British Columbia (UBC) International Relations Students Association (IRSA) in 2005, and their observations were compiled by Milan Ilnyckyj-obtained from http://www.irsa.ca. (51)

It’s your classic self-interested academic appeal for more research to be done – especially by people like the person doing the suggesting – but it’s still good to be mentioned. I shall have to read the entirety of their report once we finish cleaning up the flat from the party last night.

Housewarming party

The housewarming party was a great success. The timing was good, the attendance was good, and the environment was good. At least half the program showed up, and probably a rather higher fraction. Food and drink were consumed; the completion of the QT was celebrated; and people interacted with one another in a way well outside the academic. In particular, it was interesting to meet the significant others of a number of fellow members of the program: Iason, Emily, and Tarun – for instance.

I am sure the gathering could have been a fine sociological opportunity, but I was far too entangled to reach any judgment. I just hope that people enjoyed themselves.

PS. There’s something about playing a Melissa Ferrick song in the UK and having it recognized that is profoundly cool. In the end, it is the unexpected that propels us forward in the social universe.