I have to confess that I haven't done too much studying during Reading Week. You could take this as a sign of hubris or laziness, and I won't deny elements of that. On the whole, however, I am urging myself toward a more charitable view: I never missed a class; completed the readings for almost all classes, in many cases actually reading every page, not just skimming, and in many cases months ahead of class discussion; and took seventy thousand words of notes. Whatever you wanted me to learn, if it didn't happen already, it's not going to happen in one week of cramming.

What did I do during Reading Week? Well, I did attend the day-long Singapore Project Management Symposium, which got me credit towards maintaining my PMP certification—more about that wild party shortly. But mostly I read. I finished the last few books of Stephen King's Dark Tower series, something I've been working my way through all semester since finding the first one at a used book store here in Singapore. That's seven books and surely something approaching a million words. I finished the last book earlier this week, and on the evening of the same day I watched the last three episodes of Battlestar Galactica Season 3. That's really a lot of narrative to wrap up one one day. And perhaps that explains why I feel compelled to tell you about today's SMIG (States, Markets, and International Governance) final.

NUS takes all examinations very seriously, allegedly because in the past many classes took 90 or 100% of the grade from finals. It's hard not to wonder to what extent a multi-millenium Chinese tradition of examinations still exerts influence, to say nothing of cheating. Several professors said they didn't want to give finals but their written applications to skip finals in their classes were rejected. Happily, at least for negotiation we won't have a final. (You have thirty minutes to negotiate with your assigned partner to share 30 points of final grade between the two of you. Note that the final makes up 30% of your final grade, so this is a zero-sum negotiation. Failure to reach a signed agreement before time is up results in the loss of those points for both parties.)

Anyway, our instructor filled out extra forms so that we were able to take our exam in the computer lab at least, and I was able to change my keyboard to Dvorak; I didn't try surfing the web. The SMIG final had eight questions taken from the readings. The key instructions:

• The Exam is two (2) hours long.
• Ten (10) minutes reading time is permitted prior to commencement of the Examination.
• Candidates should answer any two of the questions in short answer format (approximately 750 words for each response)
• Candidates should answer any one of the questions in essay format (approximately 1500 words)
• there is no penalty for longer responses.

Yikes. 3000 intelligent words on three topics in 2 hours. That's an average of 25 words per minute. I can type double or triple that speed, but I can't necessarily think that fast.

There was a lot of overlap between some of the questions; while the details diffe, they all ultimately resolve to the same few points, which also serve as a summary of what I learned in class:

• Nation-states have yielded power in some areas on some topics to other kinds of actors
• In some cases nation-states have yielded this power voluntarily, because they think non-state actors will better meet the state goals.
• Nation-states could probably take a lot of this power back if they wanted to, although that would break a lot of things and likely not be in their interests.

I ended up choosing these questions for short answer: what do "anomalies between convergence and divergence ... tell us about the power and influence of the nation-state when much of the literature is suggesting that state authority is increasingly constrained by transnational economic actors and market forces?" (771 word answer), and "how do we account for such contrasting outcomes [MNEs escaping taxation, Hungary regulating foreign automobile FDI] that suggest both the increasing power of MNEs but also the continuing power of the nation-state to regulate them?" (675 words)

For the essay, I tried to "provide four examples that support Hass's thesis [that 'the world 35 years from now will be semisovereign'] and four which refute it." and answer "[h]ow might these different and contradictory forces on the Nation-State be explained and what, pen ultimately, might determine the outcome?" This one was tricky. First, I would really like to know what "pen ultimately" is intended to mean. Is there some use for "pen" that I'm not aware of, some kind of foreign word thing like "vis-à-vis" or "ipsum"? Or, it just now occurs to me, was he trying to say "penultimately", which makes no sense at all in the question, because why the heck would you be more interested in the penultimate than the ultimate outcome determinant?

To my eternal shame, due to time shortages, I resorted to using North Korea's continuing existence as an example refuting Hass' thesis. I realize as I am typing this that, since his thesis is semi-sovereignty, I could have refuted his thesis both with examples of persistent full sovereigty and of complete destruction of sovereignty, and supported it with examples specifically of semi-sovereignty, but that's spilt milk under the bridge.

I also came very close to using the Vinge/Kurzweil singularity theory in my answer. That's the theory that our lives our changing so quickly in every respect, but especially technologically, that very soon (years or decades from now, not centuries), the world will become completely incomprehensible to everyone who came before. Not just weird in the way that televisions and supermarkets are to Stone age people, but utterly different.

The only thing that really went wrong was that I mismanaged time and had to stop in the middle of my concluding paragraph (and shy of a thousand words), just as I was thinking of a few new ideas to make my point. So here, professor, in case you are dying to know, is the ending:

Previously in Joel's essay:

There will therefore be a race between technological change and political change.

And now, the thrilling conclusion to ... Joel's essay:

Technological changes will ultimately render the current, geographically based nation-states irrefutably obsolete, as our Cylon overlords impose new political and economic systems. Meanwhile, current trends towards both political aggregation, as for example with the EU and NAFTA, compete with matching trends towards devolution and self-determination, as in for example Scotland, Montenegro, provincial Malaysia. These competing trends are likely to disperse what used to be national powers, such standing armies, foreign policy, justice, and compulsory education, to new units of political power either bigger or smaller than nations. The Westphalian nation-state already stands eroded; it is unlikely that it will persist in recognizable form. When the last Gunslinger dies in his quest to reach the Dark Tower, our world will move on, as Mid-World has already done, and the Crimson King will rule unchallenged. Thus, either Roland will fail and the Dark Tower will fall, taking with it all humanity, or we will learn that we are all Cylons. To find out which ... tune in in 2008!