End of term festivities III

St. Antony's Bop

Parallel to Iffley Road, there is a whole collection of sports fields, bounded on the southern edge by burdock and the soggy shoreline of the Isis. This afternoon, after finishing a second draft of my take-home test, I walked a few kilometres along the river. I was in an exceptionally good mood all day, largely because of how enjoyable yesterday was.

One thing I notice about Oxford veterans – those in their third or fourth year here – is that they see the breaks as the time in which they really get work done. I suppose that’s partly a reflection of how directed the coursework can be; it doesn’t leave a lot of space to pursue your specific academic interests. Once thesis writing begins, I imagine that my breaks will be taken up with it. The best approach for now, I think, is to use the break to do a lot of general reading on environmental politics. That way, the thesis can adopt a fairly definite shape within a more thoroughly understood area of conceptual space.

I am going to drop of the test in Marga Lyall’s mailbox tonight, rather than trucking over to Manor Road before 9am tomorrow. It’s strangely empowering to have a 24 hour keycard for the department. It’s one of few things that really make me feel like a grad student.

The development of language

Those interested in the study and emergence of languages should do some reading about a remarkable series of occurrences in Nicaragua during the 1970s. Students at a number of schools for the deaf there, initially staffed by teachers who did not know sign language, invented their own version, which grew in complexity over a period of years.

Ann Senghas, of Columbia University, has studied the signing capabilities of people who left the school at differing times and therefore different stages of the evolution of this language. Users of the early versions of the language, for instance, could not describe whether something was on the left or right side of a photograph; users of later versions could do so.

Perhaps the most interesting questions raised by this situation relate to the nature of human cognition where it comes to language. For instance, it makes one wonder about the degree to which people are instinctually provided with mechanisms for both the comprehension and development of language.

More information is in this Wikipedia entry.

End of term festivities II

Stories untold

Between finishing more than half of the qualitative methods test today and attending two interesting bops tonight, this has been a day well spent. The New College event tonight took place not in their MCR, but in an elegant sort of attic-like structure upstairs, with bare rafters and illumination from Christmas tree lights spread along the walls.

After that, a circuitous route brought us briefly to St. Antony’s College. There, I saw Emily in the process of leaving for Morocco before we scaled the wall (St. Antony’s simply will not let you out at night) and went to respective homes.

The day has certainly been indicative of the manner in which Oxford students mark the conclusion of terms. Mine won’t really be over until this take-home exam is submitted and another pair of supervisions take place, but I can still appreciate the spirit.

Milosevic’s death

After five years on trial in The Hague, Slobodan Milosevic died in his cell earlier today. On trial for genocide and war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia, he is probably the highest profile individual to be put before an international tribunal. Now, despite the thousands of hours in court, the funds expended, and the various difficulties overcome, there will probably never be a verdict.

Of course, it may seem superfluous to deliver one after the death of the man on trial. In this case, however, I don’t think that would be true. It is important to show that these kinds of tribunals are capable of dealing with crimes of the extent Mr. Milosevic is accused of committing. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the equivalent ad hoc tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) were the precursors to the International Criminal Court (ICC), a body that is in need of establishing itself as an effective mechanism both for deterring crimes against humanity and for punishing those who violate international law in such egregious ways.

There seems to be no evidence, at present, that Mr. Milosevic died of anything other than the high blood pressure and heart condition that had previously served as the justification for an attempt to have him sent to Russia for treatment. It was a request that was not ultimately complied with. Mr. Milosevic died six days after Milan Babic, a fellow Serb prisoner, committed suicide.

Despite the length and expense of these trials, they serve an important documentary role: providing extensive evidence of what took place in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo during the 1990s. They also allow us to look back on choices like the NATO decision to employ a bombing campaign against Serbia with the benefit of better information than we had at the time. To some extent, that uncovering, sorting, and verifying of information has already taken place for the series of wars embodied by the Srebrenica massacre. Hopefully, even without the conviction of Mr. Milosevic, that will serve to make us collectively wiser in the future.

End of term festivities I

The most interesting photo available

Happy Birthday Alison Atkinson

I spent a while at the Wadham MCR party tonight, but it was so absurdly loud that I could only occupy the purlieus. Within ten metres of the speakers, the sound was so distorted as to make even familiar songs seem bizarrely warped. As a consequence of tonight being a guest dinner night, I only recognized about one in ten people there. I fairly quickly adopted the rational strategy of going back to my room to listen to Tracy Chapman, eat tofu sandwiches, and talk with Bryony over MSN.

Today did not involve a great deal of progress on the take-home exam. I’ve decided to whom I will write the hypothetical letter requesting an interview. I can therefore also begin formulating appropriate interview questions. Since I’ve never conducted a formal interview and our course didn’t actually involve any training on what kind of questions to ask, I am essentially on my own in terms of coming up with them. I suppose that if I make them pretty heavily technical, it will seem reasonably impressive to whoever marks it, though it may or may not represent an effective way of getting useful information.

I went to Beeline Cycles today and learned that their two cheapest bikes – both new – are a generic steel framed mountain bike for £80 or a hybrid for £130. They were really pushing the hybrid, saying it’s less likely to get stolen and better suited to Oxford commuting, but I’m not sure it’s worth almost twice the price. I won’t buy anything until my mother brings my D-lock and helmet from Vancouver. To have a bike and neither of those would be to court disaster.

Attempt to spark discussion

Relatively good news this week: The American armed forces have said that they will close the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Of course, with Guantanamo Bay and less well known detention centres in operation, this may be more of an exercise in public relations management than a demonstration of a genuine commitment to human rights.

Relatively bad news: President Bush struck a nuclear deal with India, largely sweeping away the restrictions put in place following its testing of nuclear weapons. The deal is evidence that the period of condemnation following the development of nuclear weapons is relatively short and likely to be truncated for short-term political reasons. Also, like the failure to pursue the reduction of existing weapons stock and experimentation on new designs, the provision of nuclear materials to India violates America’s commitments under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

South Dakota passed a law criminalizing all forms of abortion in which the life of the mother is not at risk. Through the inevitable series of court challenges, the issue will once again be presented to the Supreme Court, where a danger exists that the legally questionable but highly important precedent of Roe v. Wade will be overturned.

For no particularly good reason, the bid of DP World, a firm from the United Arab Emirates, to buy P&O Ports, owner of six major ports in the United States, has been withdrawn due to political opposition. The Dubai-based company would have been subject to the same security requirements as American firms. This outcome seems to be a reflection of the kind of generalized hostility towards the Muslim world that exists in the Western liberal democracies, despite the efforts of leaders to stress that their objection is to terrorism, not to Islam.

The road forward

Hilary Term officially ended today, concluding the first third of my M.Phil. The period from now until April 20th is an inter-term break, though one not devoid of activity:

  • 11 March – Vacation residence fees begin
  • 13 March – Qualitative methods take home test due
  • 18 March – Sarah’s wedding
  • 21 March – My mother arrives in the UK
  • 25 March – Departure for Malta
  • 1 April – Return from Malta
  • 4 April – My mother departs from the UK
  • 10 April – Move out of Library Court and into the Church Walk Flat
  • 19 April – Vacation residence fees end
  • 20 April – Qualifying exam
    Batch of scholarship applications due
  • 23 April – Trinity term begins

Medicine and mortality

Emily behind the Turf

After a potluck dinner with some Wadham graduates and Rhodes Scholar friends of Joelle’s, I went to St. John’s with a group of them to watch Gray’s Anatomy. I should have known that it isn’t the kind of show with which I deal well. Such reminders of the vulnerability and ephemeral nature of human life leave me intensely anxious, sometimes for days. It’s terrifying to think that the entirety of one’s continued existence depends on a few narrow passages staying open, a multitude of chemical reactions taking place in the right way, membranes remaining intact, and all the rest. For someone who tends to make triplicate backups of papers he is working on, the sheer absence of independent alternatives is very scary.

Hopefully, I can channel the energy generated by such anxiety into things like a focus on eating better and getting more exercise.

For my part, I can entirely understand the motivation to treat doctors as shamans who are somehow instilled with mysterious and unknowable powers. I have enormous respect for doctors, but would rather remain largely ignorant of the visceral details of their craft. While biochemistry, anatomy, and medical technology are fascinating in the abstract, the applied variants I would much rather not know too much about – an unusual contrast with my general enthusiasm for knowing how things work.

Qualitative methods test

By Monday, I need to create a mock introductory letter and mock interview, similar to ones that I might use for research. It seems sensible to create something actually akin to what I would use if I decided on formal interviews as a methodology. As such, I will probably write something directed towards a hypothetical policy maker, with questions focusing on how interaction with the scientific community guided negotiations and decisions. It seems like a good idea to get the great majority of it done tomorrow and perhaps Saturday morning. There is some kind of event at New College on Saturday night that a lot of the IR people are attending and where I would prefer to not have to worry about this assignment.

PS. I met another of the Oxford bloggers in passing tonight: Ruth Anne of the appealingly named Beer, Bikes, Books, and Good Eats.

Thinking about the Copenhagen Consensus

The Copenhagen Consensus was a project organized by Denmark’s Environmental Assesment Institute, meant to identify areas where relatively modest sums could lead to large improvements in human welfare. Unsurprisingly, most of the initiatives most strongly endorsed involved things like improving basic health and nutrition, as well as the control of infectious diseases. Almost without a doubt, these are the things that can produce the biggest gains in human welfare for the lowest cost. They should all be funded, using any available mechanisms for doing so.

At the bottom of their cost-benefit ranking come schemes to tackle climate change. This is a methodology that I feel inclined to challenge on a couple of grounds. Firstly, it’s fallacious to say that we have a simple choice between providing clean water in impoverished areas and developing less carbon intensive forms of electrical generation. There isn’t a set lump of spending to be allocated to one activity or another. When a government spends money to deploy aid supplies and sandbags to a flooded area, it should do so by dipping into funds for long-term environmental management.

Secondly, it may well be that things exist that are both exceptionally expensive and still necessary. When it comes to climate change, we are talking about the long-term habitability and character of the planet. This isn’t something that can be reasonably thought about in standard cost terms, because the value of it does not discount as we look farther into the future.

What is necessary to complete the Copenhagen Consensus project is an awareness of politics. It’s wonderful to know which areas can profit most handsomely from modest investment, but we must be mindful of the decision making processes that go into the allocation of such funding. We must take the sensible and identify the plausible within it. On the issue of climate change, that probably means continued efforts to learn just what the changes will entail, in terms of human beings and the planet’s biological and climatological systems. It also means developing means for mitigating the problems that are already certain to arise: especially for those who lack extensive means of their own to either deal with the problem of climate change or its consequences.

Narrative update

Statue in Bath, II

Aside from continued housing headaches and a 7am fire drill in the rain, today went quite well. I spent a very enjoyable hour or so talking with Bilyana, of whom I’ve seen rather less in the past few months than I would like. I also attended an interesting seminar on some of the research D.Phil students in IR are doing.

There are still concerns on the housing front. It seems that we will not get the Church Walk flat for next year after all, though we will have it for the summer. Even that, however, has not been solidly established. It’s enough to make one rather nervous. I’ve joked often enough about living under the Folly Bridge but, despite the convenient access to St. Aldates Street and the Christ Church Meadows, I don’t think it would be a very productive place to reside. As such, the pressure is on to sort out accommodations.

Easter break two days away

Over the course of the break, my highest priority is preparing for our qualifying test. We have the choice between writing two papers on history and one on theory or the opposite. We will also have five or six possible options within each of the two disciplines. In preparation, I mean to go back and read at greater length things I was only able to skim during these last two terms. I will also need to do an extensive general review of the first term, given that it will not be as fresh in my mind as the theory material.

Also to be worked on over the break is thesis planning, the location of guaranteed accommodation for the remainder of the program, and the continued search for funding. It shouldn’t be enormously long now before I hear back from the Chevening Scholarship and Overseas Research Scholarship committees. These are the two big awards about which I am the most hopeful. Either would really simplify the task of funding the second year of the M.Phil.

Of course, the two most dramatic events planned for the break are Sarah Johnston’s wedding and the Maltese expedition. Getting a few emails from an account under Sarah’s new name (Sarah Webster) today was a reminder of just how urgent the whole matter is. A few days after the wedding, for which I’ve just sorted out a place near Chichester to stay, I will be going to Malta with my mother. Some preparations remain for both expeditions; dealing with that should be a good task for the opening few days of the break.

Also worth mentioning are all the generic resolutions I make during breaks in school: to advance my discretionary reading, to get a lot more exercise (hopefully with a bike), to write letters to friends, to cook more and eat better, and to resuscitate the social parts of life that often suffer during term time.

PS. Another task for the break: producing more batches of high quality photographs to use as part of blog entries.

PPS. I must remember to do something with Bethan between the completion of her exams and her departure for China.