Oh What a Night

Last Saturday night was Pete and Charlotte’s 21st birthday party. Even though we they turned 21 about a week and a half ago and we had a surprise party for them, this was the big party and the best part of the celebration. Maude came down for the weekend and specifically for the party, which started out Saturday around 6:30. We all suited up and a select group of friends and Mrs. Dagher headed over to Lima, a lounge downtown. We hung out here eating some great south american food and drinking some really nice top shelf drinks until about 8:45.

After we left Lima, we headed over to the Kennedy Center, where we met up with the rest of the guest’s that both Pete and Charlotte had invited. At the Kennedy Center, the restaurant upstairs was closed down for our private party and there was a huge terrace we could would out on that overlooked the Potomac and Georgetown. The party was great, there was good food, good drinks, good people, and Pete make a great speech with line’s like “someone to have a sesh with.” Finally we all packed into a few cabs back to Georgetown and wrapped a great night there.

Book Signing with Ambassador Limbert

Below is the article I wrote for Intro to Journalism about a book signing with Ambassador Limbert for his book Negotiation with Iran. Probably not my best work, but here it is…

Thirty years after being held captive in Iran for over fourteen months, Ambassador and professor John Limbert has released a book, Negotiating with Iran, providing suggestions for the best way to negotiate with Iran in the future.
He graced a small crowd with his presence Monday night at DC independent bookstore Politics and Prose. In this intimate talk, Ambassador Limbert addressed a number of issues that are extremely relevant for the Obama administration today. With the recent discovery of a secret nuclear plant and the testing of long-range missiles in Iran, it becomes increasingly important that the United States finds a way to negotiate with the Iranian nation and Ambassador Limbert knows better than anyone the best way to accomplish that very important goal.
His book, Negotiation with Iran, uses four case studies of US-Iranian negotiation attempts to demonstrate the lessons that can be learned from the past on how the United States can succeed in future negotiations with Iran. Two of these case studies come from before the Islamic Revolution of 1979 so that the important lessons of history can be examined and two of the cases come after 1979 so that the difficulties of dealing with the Iranian theocracy can be better understood. Limbert insists that is absolutely crucial to recognize what he calls the “ghosts in the room” when American and Iranian diplomats are negotiating with one another.
Ambassador Limbert dismissed the conservative notion that negotiation is not an option early in his speech saying, “The question isn’t should we or shouldn’t we, its how should we?” After making it clear that negotiations were necessary, and most likely inevitable, Ambassador Limbert warned of the difficulties that the negotiators will face when trying to restore relations with Iran. He encouraged that lines of communication could be restored, but maintained that it must be done so carefully because, “Between the US and Iran, the hostility and the suspicion still run very deep.”
After concluding his brief speech, Ambassador Limbert took a few questions from audience members and answered each of them graciously and to the best of his ability. After a few questions, the event wrapped up with Ambassador Limbert taking the time to speak with anyone who remained and sign a copy of his book for anyone who wanted one.
Several of the attendee’s were students of a senior seminar taught by the Ambassador who admired his passion for Iran. One student, Patty, said she attended his book signing because, “He is so knowledgeable and passionate about the subject.” Many of the other members of the audience were family and friends; one even joked with the Ambassador as they made plans for dinner the following week. A crowd with so many friends and admirers really provided this event with a warm feeling, even to someone on the outside, and showed just how respected Ambassador Limbert is within his field.
Walking out of Politics and Prose and down Connecticut Avenue, that warm feeling of respect could still be felt, along with some of the Ambassador’s most memorable words from the night about the current administration’s relationship with Iran, “Obama is dangerous to Iranian leaders because he is a rival, not an enemy.”

New Blog

Check out the new blog I’m just working on starting Student Tech. The name is a work in progress, but its all about technology, social media, school, and sometimes how they all go together. The new blog isn’t all about me so if you don’t care about my life read that one instead.

Plus, check back here soon as I’m going to post an article I wrote for my journalism class recently.

Twitter

Not really related to anything, but I just have to throw this out there because it is something I have been thinking about. If you don’t use twitter, you have probably at least heard of it. Millions of people are using this microblogging site to update people on what they are doing all the time. In their last round of fundraising, Twitter raised $100 million dollars of venture capital. This puts the companies valuation at about $1 billion dollars. I see great potential for twitter, but I still don’t understand how this is possible when it has absolutely no revenue stream and hasn’t even made any business plan public. So there is not revenue and no plan for generating revenue, yet the company is worth $1 billion dollars. That is absolutely incredible. Especially since I can’t even think of a way for twitter to generate a substantial amount of money, at least for the near future they have already ruled out ads and it seems like they would lose a large portion of their users if they made people pay to use the service. But, in the end it doesn’t really matter because they were able to raise the money regardless and twitter has cemented itself as a major part of the social media experience. It is a unique tool for both personal communication and an interesting space for companies to build their brands.

Twitter’s multiple uses, especially one I haven’t even explored here, are what make it a key part of what I want to study. It’s capacity for rapid and massive community organization make it a very interesting tool for grassroots organization, specifically in non-democratic states. Hopefully, in the future I will have a lot more to say about the topic and know a lot more about exactly how effective twitter (and other social media tools) are in helping civil society progress a state toward democratization. Though what I want to study is a bit more in depth and complicated, all of that is why I think twitter is interesting and why it is a major part of what I want to study.

Follow me @NickWMiller

A Month to Mongolia or Two in SEA

So this is my last year in college (though hopefully I’ll be heading to grad school) and I want to do some traveling before I actually have to do things during the summer.  Pending my budget, I plan on taking a major trip either next summer or the one after.  I would prefer to go next summer but that may not be an option since there is a good chance I won’t have enough money.  Regardless, there are two main options I am considering.

The first option is Mongolia.  More accurately it is the Mongol Rally, which means I would be driving in a really crappy car with a friend or two from London to Mongolia. This drive would take somewhere between 4-6 weeks and would have us pass through somewhere between 12-15 countries.  Some of these countries would be places I visited during my semester abroad, though I’m sure I’d see them in a whole new way, and others would include places like Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, northern China and Mongolia.  Some of these places don’t really even have roads so we would just be driving through staying in tents and stopping pretty much anywhere.  The Mongol Rally would be a great experience, a rough one consider we would have no idea where we would end up from night to night and we would be spending a lot of time in a car, but it would definitely be worth it.

The second option would be to spend two months traveling through southeast asia.  My plan there would be to start in India, then go over to the real SEA countries like Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Singapore, and Thailand, and finally to head to Tokyo for a week before finally flying back to the US.  Overall I’ve calculated this trip to be around $5000 and obviously thats assuming I’m staying in hostels and not anything nice, but thats part of the experience really.  This part of the world is totally different than anywhere I’ve been before and its something I definitely want to see, plus its supposed to be absolutely beautiful.  I figure no matter which option I choose I can’t really lose and it would be awesome.  Plus if I am a student for the next 6 or 7 years, I could probably do both.

Let me know what you think sounds better or if you have any opinions on what I should do.  I’m looking for some input to help me decide what the best option is.

The GRE

One of the many requirements for getting into graduate school is the GRE, basically a more advanced version of the SAT (the test used for college admissions).  The GRE is kind of ridiculous to be honest.  It is taken on a computer and is adaptive, therefore the better you do at the beginning the harder the test gets but the higher your score.  Essentially, if you blow the first couple questions your doomed to a bad score.  This, combined with the fact that the verbal section is basically a vocab test, means your score could vary wildly from test to test.  If you get a few words you don’t know your in trouble.

That being said, I took the GRE on Monday.  I was pretty nervous because my two most recent practice tests hadn’t gone that well.  But the test itself ended up fine and I was pretty satisfied with my results.  Though just to prove how fickle the test is, I will say that I was a bit dissatisfied with my verbal score because I didn’t know several of the words for antonym and analogy questions.  My math score on the other hand was extremely good and I was shocked because I had never scored that high on math before.  I’m happy though because at least the two combined gave me a solid score that I can work with as I continue the application process.